Slayer: Episode Four: Night of the Everlasting
by Gary Boshears
Summary: AU - New series starring Faith! Episode Four: Night of the Everlasting - Faith begins to experience dreams of a past Slayer when an organized cult of vampires familiar to Spike arrives in Sunnydale. COMPLETE (6 of 6 parts online) Please Review!
1. Overture

SLAYER EPISODE FOUR: NIGHT OF THE EVERLASTING 

**STARRING:**

**Eliza Dushku as Faith**

**James Marsters as Spike**

**Iyari Limon as Kennedy**

**Shane West as Robert**

**And**

**Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn**

**GUEST STARRING:**

**Tara Reid as Barris**

**D. B. Woodside as Principal Robin Wood**

**Nicholas Brendon as Xander**

**Kenneth Marshall as General Segur**

**And**

**Casey Liggett as Erika**

**CREATED BY:**

**Gary Boshears**

**Based on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' & 'Angel' created by Joss Whedon**

**WRITTEN BY:**

**Gary Boshears**

**Check my author profile for links to the discussion forum and Yahoo group.  Use these to post and share your thoughts on the series.**

OVERTURE 

**EUROPE****; OCTOBER, 1154 A.D.**

            "Fire!"  A barrage of hundreds of flaming arrows from the ranks of archers, flew towards the massive black stone castle, the features of which were only visible thanks to dim torches burning on the sealed gate and along the walls, the army had laid siege to.  The arrows flew over the stone walls and towers, striking several of the enemy archers that had aligned themselves on the walls.  Only a few of the projectiles landed exactly on the mark, their targets bursting into a cloud of dust as the weapon sailed through them.

            Those upon the walls in the towers returned fire.  Black arrows sailed into the thousands of troops.  Those who had them raised their shields and those who did not took whatever cover they could.  The amount of firepower from the defenders did not match that of the attackers but their accuracy was far greater, striking several mounted commanders off their horses as well as killing three standard bearers, a symbolic victory if nothing else.

            Galloping to the front of their lines on his white horse, General Segur raised his green eyes to the night sky.  The moonlight could barely be seen through the dark gray clouds.  He took a heavy breath, a white cloud forming in front of his mouth as he released it.  He heard the tapping of a rain drop against his clean silver armor, followed by another and then another until a light stinging rain began to fall from the cold night sky.  The general wrapped his heavy, dark red cloak around his armored chest and arms.  The cold and the rain were not furthering their possibilities for an assault against the stronghold this evening.

            Segur turned to his right, where his second in command stood firm on his own steed.  Their army had marched for weeks by day and fought by night against this foe.  Despite the fatigue and hunger of their troops, the resolve to end this threat was still strong and would not falter if the final assault was delayed for another night.  "Have archers provide cover fire, order all lines to fall back behind the hill," he pointed to the hill in the distance they had crossed only an hour before.  "The sun will be up in a few hours, we will rest during the day and attack at dusk."

            "Why not attack when the sun shines?"  His second in command did not understand this enemy they faced, not the way Segur did.  "We should attack at a time when they are vulnerable, stop fighting on their terms and take the battle to them when the most damage can be done."

            Thunder clapped and the rain began to poor harder.  The commander of the archer divisions ordered another salvo against the walls of the castle as Segur and his second continued their debate.  "If we were to attack the castle during the day, they would have their numbers consolidated inside.  Sunlight has no bearing in a castle with few windows to the outside.  Better to engage as many of them in open field as possible before we are forced to deal with having to drive them from the inside out."

            "I have not fought this foe for as long as you General," the second continued to persist in his argument.  Segur did not see what he did everyday.  Did not see the hunger and fatigue of all of their troops, the men who would never see their wives, sons and daughters again.  He did not see the fear whenever one of these strange enemies descended upon them.  He did not see how cold they were or how frightened.  He did not see how badly each and every one of them wanted to return home.  "But even I know some of their weaknesses.  The men do not understand why we continue to make our actions during the night rather than pressing the advantage we hold when the sun shines."

            "You cannot fight this enemy during the day Captain," Segur insisted.  Although he was an experienced solider, the Captain had only recently joined their campaign and did not understand the complexities involved in their fight.  "If we could draw them out into the sunlight, I would gladly do so but we cannot and I refuse to sacrifice so many lives by fighting so many of them in close quarters.  Better to engage them in open field where numbers and tactics can be our allies."

            "Then we should attack now, while the momentum is ours."

            The exchange of arrow fire from the archers on the ground and walls continued, more of Segur's army falling than the defenders.  "We have no momentum captain, we must regroup, consolidate our forces before the final strike."

            "General, the men are tired of this fight," the captain saw things in a much different light than Segur did.  "Many of them do not understand why we are still fighting.  The enemy has been driven from our lands yet still we pursue them to every corner of the earth."

            "We pursue them because it is the right thing to do and we will not stop until every one and their leader have been destroyed," General Segur's composure did not falter but he did grow weary of this conversation.  A volley of arrows from the walls of the castle struck down the front line of an infantry squad assembling near the general's position.  The army's archers returned fire.  "Pull your men back," the general waived to the unit commander who hastily followed his order.  Segur looked back at the captain.  "We fight because it is the right thing to do, because it needs to be done."  Segur brought his horse about and began to ride away, shouting the orders to fall back.

            "Or do we fight for revenge?"  The captain shouted his question to his general's back.  Segur brought his mount to a halt, slowly turned around and rode towards the now rain soaked captain who nodded in response when he saw the confusion in the general's eyes.  "I know what they did to your family, these creatures and I know what you had to do after that.  I can understand your desire for revenge after such a traumatic experience but do not risk the lives of every soldier under you command just to gratify your desire for vengeance."

            That brought back painful memories.  He had just returned from a long campaign, eager to see his wife, to hold his two little daughters.  Everything in the house seemed perfectly normal.  He hadn't expected them to be awake that late but he wanted to see the children before crawling into bed with his wife.  They looked like they were sleeping until he put his hand on their cold skin.  It was in his panic that he saw the marks on their necks.  He had then turned around to see his wife standing in the doorway but it wasn't his wife.  Her face was that of a demon and had it not been for the sword at his side and his ability to strike before she got close, he would likely have joined his children.

            There were many days, even now, four years later, that he wished he had.  There would still be plenty of opportunities for him to do so.  "We attack at dusk tomorrow," he put aside the captain's challenge to his motivations.  "If nothing else, it will give the men time to rest and time for our reinforcements to arrive from the south," he hoped those reinforcements had survived the mission they were sent on, one that was intended to break their enemy's back as well as cut of their lines of retreat, effectively bottling them up at the castle.

            "Those forces haven't been heard from in days," the captain's behavior, in Segur's mind, was beginning to border on insubordinate.  "They were sent on what could best be called a fool's mission and could very well have been destroyed."

            "I assure you captain they were not," a distinct female voice came from behind the two officers.  They turned to see her riding up on a black horse.  The young woman was small in a stature, a black cloak covering her almost frail looking body, only small slices of her fiery red hair visible from underneath the hood.  "They will be here by mid-day tomorrow, I rode ahead to bring news of our victory over the everlasting that held the city in the south."  Segur was pleased to see her, one piece of good news in this war.

            "Good to see that you and your forces survived."

            "I'm pleased that you decided to postpone the final assault until our arrival," she went on.  "I'll admit to being a bit anxious to get this over with but I feel the need to be a part of that final battle."

            "And we are pleased to have you with us," Segur admitted.  The first three years of their campaign against this foe was marked by defeat after defeat until this mysterious young woman had arrived, taught them their weaknesses and how to fight them.  "It would not be fitting for the end to come without you being here."

            She smiled; it had been a long time since anyone had paid her a compliment, a long time since she felt deserving of one.  "General, when the attack commences," she brought her horse around and began gesturing to a section of the walls, a weakness in their defense she had noticed on her approach.  "If you order the archers to –" the captain cut her off.

            "Explain to me again general," the captain was frustrated with his failure to reach the general, to explain to him what his troops were going through and what he thought was the proper course of action for ending this bloody conflict.  "Why a great man and leader such as yourself yields authority and takes orders from this peasant whore!"  She could not let that challenge go unanswered.

            With a quick move, she struck him on the side of his face with her fist, knocking him from his horse, sending him splashing into a puddle of mud.  She jumped off her own, sloshing through the mud towards the captain.  He dug his own arms out of the mud and scrambled for the sword at his side.  As soon as he managed to draw it, she kicked it from his hand.  With blinding speed, she reached into her cloak, pulling a dagger with a jewel studded gold handle from a sheath at her side and pressing it against his neck.

            He could barely see her blue eyes and red hair under the cloak but he felt her breath upon his face, felt the anger and the emanating from her despite the cold air, freezing rain and muddy pool he sat in.  "Because I'm the one who knows how to kill them.  I'm the one who is destined to kill them.  I'm Erika, the Vampire Slayer."

*******

            Faith awoke from the vivid dream in a cold sweat.  It had been so real.  She could feel the cold air, the rain, the mud in her feet, her fist hitting the face of the man and knocking the sword from his hand.  More than that however, she could feel the determination of the young woman, Erika she called herself.

            The Slayer rolled over, looking at red numbers on her digital alarm clock.  Two-thirty in the morning, times this early weren't supposed to exist, especially when she had to be awake in a few hours to get ready for work and she had been patrolling late last night.  Although she needed the sleep, she also didn't want to go back to the dream.  Something about it had frightened her, as the few 'Slayer' dreams she had in the past often did.

            Slowly, Faith got out from under the dark gray sheets and red comforter, not bothering to put her robe on over the white tank-top and black panties she had worn to bed as she proceeded into the hall.  Before walking down the stairs, she looked in on both Dawn and Kennedy who were sleeping comfortably in their own rooms.  The kitchen was her first and only stop at the bottom of the stairs, where she immediately went for the refrigerator.

            Amongst the assorted condiments, left over boxes of takeout and the casserole Andrew had cooked for them, she located a bottle of water, twisted the top off and chugged it heartily.  She was always thirsty following a dream like that.  This dream was different from the others.  Her prior dreams always involved Buffy in some way, something Giles explained by saying it had something to do with them being the only two Slayers ever alive at the same time.  She had never had any sort of dream about the past however.

            Faith remembered her first watcher telling her that Slayers would often have prophetic dreams.  She didn't see how dreaming about a Slayer from the past was at all prophetic but she also didn't pretend to understand how such things worked.  Maybe there was more to it than there seemed.  Normally she would consider calling Giles and asking him but he had proven impossible to get in touch with for the past week, since Robert had arrested Preston.  Whatever stuck up watcher she had managed to get on the phone simply told her he was indisposed.

            It began to feel as though trying to unravel the mystery of her dream was bringing the fatigue back to her body.  She took a final swig of the water, put the half-empty bottle back in the refrigerator and went back up the stairs, unaware of the eyes watching her from the outside the window.  "Soon Slayer," the figure standing in the shadows outside the Summers' home whispered.  "Soon."


	2. Act One

ACT ONE 

            It had been a slow day for Faith.  Usually by this time of day, one-thirty in the afternoon, she had talked to at least a half-dozen kids who walked into her office and another three or four who had been sent by teachers to talk to her.  The only person she had talked to today had been a sophomore from the football team who the upperclassmen had bet wouldn't try to touch her in an inappropriate place.  Needless to say, he didn't get close, earning him, no doubt, some form of demeaning penalty from the others.

            Faith was tired, sleeping very lightly after waking up from her disturbing dream earlier today.  She sat with her right elbow leaning on her desk and her head resting in that hand, facing towards her window that looked out on the hallway and away from the rest of the school counselor's office.  With her left hand, she was doodling with a pencil on a normal piece of lined paper.

            She had never considered herself to be much of an artist or an artist at all for that matter.  Something was compelling her however to try remembering as many details about the Slayer from her dream as possible.  The only way she could think of doing so was represented by the drawing, she considered to be rather crude, in front of her.  The basic features were there, the shape of her face, the locks of hair creeping out from under the black cloak but it didn't do the details she saw in her dream justice.

            In an effort to try to learn more about this Slayer, she had searched on the internet for Erika the Vampire Slayer and various variations of it.  In doing so however, she learned that the internet was probably not the best median for locating information on past Slayers.  There were a number of sites with people claiming to know something about vampires, Slayers or watchers but most seemed to be mere speculation based off pieces of history and half-truths from people who had seen a vampire.

            She picked up her phone and dialed the number to Giles' private line for the third time today.  When the same watcher she had talked to the other three times, Faith simply said she would try again later and hung up the phone.  She considered talking to one of them but they were pretty green around the gills for the most part and she trusted Giles, she didn't know the rest of the new council.

She then trialed to dial Buffy's cell-phone, thinking that she might have some insight into this dream but received an automated recording advising her that Buffy's cell-phone had either been turned off or wasn't in the service area.  "A lot of help," Faith vented her frustration on the recording before hanging up the phone and returning to her relaxed position, picking up where she had left off on her drawing.

            Unlike most dreams, she could remember every detail about this one even now, hours after it had happened.  In some ways, she wished she could have seen more of what had happened, either before or after the events she witnessed.  Although the history of the Slayers was not a strong point or hers, nor a weak point or any sort of point, it seemed as though she would have heard mention of a Slayer who once led an army of men against an army of vampires, no matter how long ago it happened.

            "Faith," when she heard Principal Wood's voice coming from behind her, Faith realized she had briefly dozed off while resting on her desk.  "Faith," she slowly looked up to see him standing over her, wearing a gray suit, white shirt, blue tie and his signature gold earrings.

            "Hey," she said groggily, stuffing her drawing under a pile of papers on her desk.  "Sorry boss, guess I'm kind of worn down."  Up until last night, she hadn't known sleep could be so exhausting.  She hoped he hadn't been standing there for too long waiting for her to wakeup.

            "Yeah, the snoring kind of tipped me off," with the dry yet sarcastic tone in his voice, Faith couldn't be sure if he was joking or if she actually had been snoring in the middle of her office during the middle of the work day.  "Long night?"  Any other employee would likely deserve a stern dressing down for being asleep on the job but he could excuse it from the Slayer.  She had more important things to worry about than acting as a school counselor.

            "You might say that," for an odd reason, Faith didn't exactly feel comfortable discussing long nights with Robin.  "You know, uh, Slayer stuff."

            "Yeah," Robin paused and awkwardly stood in front of Faith's desk.  She felt a conversation she did not want to have coming on.  "Look Faith, I think we need to talk, about what happened last year."  Faith wondered why he hadn't brought this up sooner and wondered why she hadn't declared she didn't want to talk about it before he brought it up.  This was a conversation she never enjoyed having with any man, one she always did her best to avoid.

            Faith shrugged.  "Umm … First Evil?  Nearly averted apocalypse?  Almost hell on earth?"  She pretended to not know what he was talking about in an effort to make him drop the whole idea of talking about what they had done together.

            "Well, yeah, I guess all of that was involved in it in some way but I was kind of talking about us and what we did together," Wood replied dryly, not really in the mood for dancing around the subject or completely avoiding it the way Faith was trying to.  He felt the need to get things out in the open, clear the air between them.

            Faith thought he would have gotten the point by now.  "Oh yeah, we kicked a lot of ass together, great job by the way."  She again played ignorant as to what the principal was trying to talk about.  It wasn't that it bothered her; she normally just tried to avoid discussion of such things after they occurred.

            "You know what I mean Faith."

            "Yeah I do," Faith gave in.

            "Listen," Wood pulled up a chair from an empty desk near Faith's and sat down backwards in it, leaning against the back of it and wheeling closer to Faith.  Although he wanted to get it out in the open between the two of them, it wasn't something he wanted his entire staff to overhear.  "I realize we were both hurting at the time and we both needed somebody and that, in the long run, it probably didn't really mean anything."

            "Robin I'm sorry," Faith truly felt as though she had used him, used him to make herself feel better and part of her, a large part, couldn't stand it.  "I didn't mean to do that, I just –"

            "Needed to feel special, needed to feel wanted and needed."  Wood finished the sentence for her.  That made her feel better that he seemed to understand.  "Yeah, I know what you mean, 'cause I think I felt the same way.  I just wanted to make sure it wasn't going to make you feel weird, working here after what happened."

  
            "Hey," Faith perked up and blew it off.  "I'm five by five if you are boss."

            "Yeah, I guess I'm five by five also."  He thought about that odd phrase for a moment.  "A five by five what exactly?"  It occurred to Faith, in all the years she had used that catch phrase, no one had bothered to ask that question and it was one she didn't really know the answer to.

            Faith laughed.  "I don't think it really matters."  As the two of them shared a playful laugh together, she suddenly felt better.  She hadn't had much reason to laugh the past few weeks and being able to do so, even for a few seconds felt very good.  "Thank you," Faith added once the laughing subsided.

            "For what?"

            "Giving me a reason to laugh, haven't had one of those in a while now."  Faith thought about the past few weeks where Spike had deserted them, she and Robert had grown apart and demons, super-nerds and vampires had tried to kill all of them.

            "So what's this Slayer thing that caused you to not get enough sleep and hence be falling asleep on the job?"  Wood decided it best to try and change the subject.  He knew, from the few conversations they had that she was having a hard time adjusting and the last thing he wanted was to try and make her talk about the reasons she had not to laugh.  "Vampire?  Demon?"

            "Dream," both of Wood's ideas sounded a great deal more exciting than her answer.  It was an answer however that seemed to intrigue him, judging by the expression on his face.

            "What sort of dream?"  Wood showed peculiar interest in it.  Faith guessed it was natural; he was the son of a Slayer after all.  That could even given him some insight into what the dream might mean.  If his mother ever had anything similar, then he might know something about it, possibly having overheard her watcher telling her something about them.

            "A former Slayer, I don't know."  Faith couldn't think of the right way to describe the dream to him.  "I mean, I remember every second of it in perfect detail but it didn't offer a whole lot of explanation as to what was going on."  She reached under the stack of papers and pulled her drawing out, handing it to Wood.  "Not much of an artist but that's her I think.  Pretty sure the name is Erika."

            "Erika," Wood knew a little bit about Slayer history, something he picked up thanks to being raised by a watcher.  "Doesn't sound familiar, must not have been one of the more recent Slayers."

            "Definitely not a recent Slayer," Faith agreed, having gotten a decent look at the surroundings and people in the dream.  "At least not judging by the big stone castle, bows and arrows and guys in armor on horses."

            "Interesting," he didn't know much about the Slayers from the medieval era.  Although the watchers of the time had kept fairly detailed accounts, there weren't many reproductions of those records and the originals were kept in the council archive, until the First's war last year brought an end to that archive, many of the records being lost in the process.  "Do you remember anything else that might be relevant?"

            "Two guys arguing," Faith replayed all of it in her memory.  "A general and a captain.  There was a war going on.  This big army was attacking a castle, vampires were guarding it.  There was a war," the images began to vividly come back to Faith of the exchange of arrows between the army and the vampires while the two leaders argued about the campaign that had lasted for years.  "The Slayer was leading an army or at least helping to lead the army.  Can't think of much else."

            "There's not much on the Slayers of that time but I don't remember ever hearing anything about a Slayer that led an army against vampires."  Wood remembered everything his mother and her watcher had told him about Slayers and the methods they used to get the job done.  "Historically, Slayers have almost always fought alone.  You and Buffy are most exceptions rather than the rule."  

He studied the sketch.  It was actually quite good and detailed; Faith had even done an admirable job of shading, painting a vivid blank and white picture of the young woman.  "You're a better artist than you give yourself credit for."  As he looked into the eyes of the picture, he became more and more sure that he had seen this woman before though the name and circumstances Faith associated with her were still not familiar.

"Must be one of those latent Slayer abilities I discover at random," Faith joked as she returned to her resting position, this time using her left elbow and arm for support so she could continue her conversation with Wood and not turn her back to him.

"You mind if I keep this?"  Faith didn't really understand the reason Robin would ask such an odd thing, her eyes asked him for more of an explanation.  "I've got a few volumes at home, accounts from watchers about their Slayers.  Some of them go back pretty far, might be able to find some information on her.  Maybe figure out why you're suddenly having dreams about her."

"You really think the picture will help?"  As thorough as watchers usually were in their documentations, she surmised that most accounts of the Slayer's actions would probably include minor details such as names.

"Maybe," Wood continued to study the features of the young woman Faith had drawn.  "Some of the names recorded in the watcher's accounts don't translate very well or are interpretations of what the name means, a picture might help me to match her up with a description.  Not to mention, I swear I've seen her somewhere before."

If Wood thought it was that important, Faith could live with it.  "Well, I was going to maybe get it framed, start a portfolio or something but it's yours if you think it'll help."

            "Thanks Faith," Wood stood up and tucked the picture into a manila folder under his arm.  "I'll look into this and get back to you if I find anything."  He started to walk away but quickly turned around.  "Why don't you take the rest of the day off?  Go home and get some rest."

            "No, I think I can manage."

            "You need the rest Faith, besides," Wood glanced around the office to make sure nothing was waiting to devour him, supernatural or otherwise.  "I'll dare to paint a bull's eye on my head by saying that everything is quiet around here.  We can do without you for a couple hours."

            "You sure?"  Faith asked with raised eyebrows.  She admitted that a couple hour afternoon nap was definitely something she could use.

            "No," Wood admitted and considered the possibility that hell could literally break loose beneath them as soon as he sent the Slayer home.  "But I've never been sure about most things in my life, why start now?"

            "Good point boss," Faith gathered her purse, picking up her day minder off her desk, the one thing she had bothered to put on it when she arrived at work this morning.  "Try to hold down the fort without me," she gave him a jocular smile as she started to walk out of the office.

            "It'll be tough but I think we can handle it," Wood decided to squeeze in one last question.  "You going patrolling tonight?"  Faith turned around and gave a groggy nod.  "Well be careful, I try to keep a pulse on that kind of activity throughout the town and my sources have been pretty quiet lately."

            "Seems to me like that'd be a good thing," Faith thought that no one talking about demons or vampires would be a good sign of decreased activity amongst those groups.

            "No, it's when they're scared quiet that I start worrying."

*******

            The three hour nap Faith had caught after being sent home from school, a concept that reminded all too well of when she was in school, had done her good.  The nap was especially nice as it had been devoid of any peculiarly strange Slayer dreams, things Faith was trying very hard to not think about.  Every time she thought about the dreams, the more feeling she remembered and the more real they felt.

            It reassured and gave her some strange feeling of comfort to know Robin was looking into it.  Since she was out of contact with Giles and didn't feel comfortable with the rest of the new council, it was nice to have someone like Wood who she felt she could trust.  Dawn and Kennedy were great to have around but they were both kids and despite what they had been through, had a lot of growing up left to do in Faith's eyes.

            Faith trolled through the cemetery.  The first hour of her patrol this evening had been fruitless.  She had investigated one fresh grave at the beginning of her rounds but it had turned out to be nothing.  For one of the first times she could remember, Faith actually had no desire to find a vampire or any other hell creature this evening.  With the mood she was in, she had nearly called off patrolling altogether.  She had another feeling though that made it feel very necessary this evening.  Still, she would just as soon have a quiet evening.

            Faith also couldn't remember the last time she had gotten everything she wanted.  She heard the faint sound of the freshly cut grass crunching beneath the feet of something behind her.  Vampires when they were on the hunt had a particular way of moving, the sound of which she had learned to discern.  Clutching the stake in her hand tightly, she counted on the creature believing it still had the element of surprise against her.

            Like a whirlwind, the Slayer spun around, flipping the point of the stake into her fingers and preparing to throw the wooden weapon.  Her plan to do so was cut short however as she saw the form of the vampire burst into a cloud of dust as she took aim against it.  As the dark brown particles fell to the ground, she saw a familiar figure standing behind it, stake in hand.

            "You stealing my kills now?"  Faith replaced the stake in her front pocket as Robert approached her.  His dark blue shirt and light blue jeans did not provide the best camouflage but Faith admitted that her red strapless shirt and black jeans weren't the best form of disguise for patrol either.

            "Guess I didn't count on you moving so slow," Robert gave a sarcastic shrug and wry grin with his answer.  After a week of not seeing her, a week in which he had done his share of patrolling in the cemeteries; Robert had not expected to find to run into Faith this evening.  "Patrol?"  He wasn't the best at coming up with conversation starters, especially when it was Faith he was trying to start the conversation with.

            Her eyes glanced down at the stake tucked in the front pocket of her jeans.  "Was it that obvious?"  She started to turn away but she began to wonder why she was treating him so badly.  He hadn't done anything to her and didn't deserve that.  "Sorry, Robbie, just got a lot on my mind these last few days."  It was a lousy explanation, but all the Slayer could offer, pleased to see that Robert didn't seem to be taking her attitude to seriously.  "Yeah, patrol, how about you?"

            "The same, just trying to get in a few rounds of good, old-fashioned demon bashing before calling it a night.  You know, I've got to keep the skills honed after all.  What better way to practice than finding a couple normal, run of the mill, every day vamps?"  Faith smiled slightly at what was probably not intended to be a joke.  Robert had what she considered to be a bad habit of doing that, making her feel good after she treated him badly.  Robert pointed down a long winding path through the rows of tombstones, crypts and mausoleums.  "I was just heading that way actually.  Care to walk with me."

            "Why not," Faith began leading the way down the nicely paved path.  "Might as well give the vamps a double ass-kicking while we have the opportunity to."  It wasn't that she wanted the company; simply that she didn't feel she would be able to easily get rid of Robert.  That in mind, it would be better to have someone watching her back who she actually knew was watching her back.

            The two of them walked silently for a few minutes, Faith slightly swinging her arms while Robert kept his hands in his pockets.  Faith took a slight lead, occasionally glancing over her shoulder at Robert whose eyes would instinctively dart away from her when she did so.  She then decided the silence was becoming too uncomfortable.  "So, how've you been?"

            "Good," that question for Robert was more difficult than it should have been.  "Just working a lot and doing a little of the demon-killing on the side.  Usual stuff I guess."

            "Yeah, same here; except the demon-killing thing is a little bit more of a full-time deal for me.  You know, that whole sacred calling thing and all.  Just your average run of the mill demons the last few days though.  No horrible assassins and no ditzy blondes."

            "How's work going?"  Robert of course referred to her normal job rather than the sacred one which she just finished talking about.  They turned a smooth corner on the path, leading them down another long row of tombstones, many with freshly placed flowers covering almost all colors in the spectrum.  The two of them glanced down the row, breathing the fresh scents of life in a place of death.

            "Good I guess."  Faith sighed and shook her head, Robert waited for her to continue, knowing that she had something else to say about the subject.  "I don't know, just not feeling too terribly useful I guess.  I mean, I talk to people and they act like I help them but, I just don't feel it."

            "You know, to a degree, I can relate to that."

            "Yeah, I can imagine," Faith debated for a moment as to if she wanted to bring up the thought that popped into her head.  "Look Robert, I'm sorry about how I acted the other day, telling you to leave me alone.  That was a pretty bitchy thing for me to do, especially considering all the help you've been since you got here."

            "Don't worry about it Faith," Robert shrugged her apology if.  "It's no big deal."

            "Yeah it is," Faith seemed intent on punishing herself.

            "No it's not.  You were hurt.  You'd let yourself start to trust Preston and you had that trust thrown back in your face and because of that you didn't want to trust anybody.  I understand Faith.  Everyone has been through something like that in their lives and I don't blame you for acting the way you did."

            Faith often wondered why he had to be so damned understanding all the time.  Sometimes she wished he would just get mad and save her from having to be mad at herself.  "Speaking of Preston," she felt it best not to dwell on the subject of her inexcusable attitude.  "How's he enjoying the cell you found for him?"

            "A couple of the corrections officers down at county told me he had quite a few complaints about the food and the hours the lights were left on," Faith laughed slightly, remembering the response Robert used to give people who voiced similar complaints.  "Maybe he'll like it better down in Los Angeles County."

            "They transferred him there?"

            "Yeah, they seriously want to talk to him about the fate of the real Preston Mathers," Robert pointed out what appeared to be a freshly dug grave at the end of a row; the two began walking towards it.  "I talked to one of their detectives on the phone in the other day and they wouldn't be specific but my guess is he's looking at murder charges."

            "Serves him right," the Slayer bent down, delicately running her fingers across the top of the freshly laid soil, dipping the tips of them into it, believing a certain Slayer sense would kick in if a vampire was preparing to rise from this grave.  She stood up, sweeping her hands together to dust them off.  "Dud."

            Robert glanced down at the grave and again at Faith.  She seemed to discount the possibility all too quickly for his tastes.  "You sure?"

            "Yeah," Faith turned around and looked in his direction, now even more certain that the grave wasn't where the threat lay.  "Considering the bad guys are running up behind you."  Thanks to Faith's advanced warning, Robert ducked and rolled out of the way of the sword swung by the figure clad in black robes.  Another figure came from behind the first, swinging at Faith.

            She side-stepped the attack, grabbing the arm of the figure and tossing it into the one who had attacked Robert, knocking them both on the ground.  "Behind you!"  Robert alerted Faith to a new danger.  She dropped low to the ground, sweeping the feet out from another attacker than had come from behind her while she was engaged against the first two.  As he fell, she immediately leapt into a scissor-kick, striking the fourth attacker who was behind the one she swept to the ground.

            As the first two attackers recovered, Robert was back in the fight.  They charged towards Faith, prepared to strike with their long swords.  As one swung the weapon at him, gripping it with both hands, Robert ducked.  He grabbed the hands of the attacker, gripping them firmly in one of his own and punched him in the stomach with the other.  As that one dropped backwards, the second one closed in.  It swung with its sword twice, Robert able to narrowly dodge each blow, feeling air flying off the blade as it whizzed past his head.

            Taking advantage of the missed swings, Robert kicked the sword from the hand of the attacker.  He immediately followed that attack by kicking the attacker in the face, running towards him and striking him repeatedly in chest and stomach with his fists.  With the attacker weakened, he delivered another kick to his face, sending him crashing hard into a tree.  The other attacker wasted no time in launching a new offensive with his sword.  In response, Robert reached to his back, drawing the two curved blade short swords he had concealed under his shirt and parrying the attacks.

            Faith was handling her own fight against the second group of mysterious attackers.  She ducked another sword attack, pummeling the chest of the attacker with her fists before kicking the side of its head and pushing him into a tombstone that broke in half upon his forceful contact with it.  The other attacker came from behind her only to be met by Faith delivering a backward kick to his stomach.

            The Slayer spun about, swinging her fist around, striking the attacker in its hood covered face.  It again brought its sword down, aiming for her head.  Faith ducked her upper body in the opposite direction of the attack.  Taking advantage of her positioning, she repeatedly struck her opponent in the ribs with her fists.  Not dissuaded by her attacks, the figure came around, swinging its blade low.  Faith jumped, dodged the attack and delivered a spinning kick to the black clad figure, knocking the blade from his hand.

            She landed, catching the enemy's sword as it fell.  While the attacker was still recovering, she swung.  Its head flew off of its shoulders both it and the body soon dissolving into a pile of brown dust.  "Vamps!"  She shouted to Robert who was brutally engaged in a sword fight against the two other vampires.  She then realized she had her own fight to worry about as her remaining vampire again swung its sword at her.

            Robert kicked the vampire coming up behind him back into the same tree he had sent it into earlier in the fight.  With one of his blades, he parried the attack by the vampire in front of him.  Having his defense blocked, Robert brought his other blade down, stabbing the vampire in the thigh.  As the creature yelled in pain, he brought the other blade around, severing its head and turning it into a cloud of dust.  As the other vampire recovered from his violent encounter with the tree, Robert dropped one of his swords, pulled a stake from his pocket and hurled it into the vampire's chest.

            Faith parried a low diagonal attack from the last remaining vampire.  She brought her sword up, slicing downward from left to right at the vampire, cutting his black robe across the chest.  Their blades met in the center of each of their ranges as the vampire skillfully parried a stab move by the Slayer.  They traded attacks, both combatants swinging, slicing and stabbing, all moves being parried by the other.  Robert held back, prepared to engage if it seemed as though Faith was in trouble.

            She soon gained the advantage however.  As she blocked an upward diagonal cut from the vampire, she took advantage of its lowered defense and landed a fierce kick on its chest.  She brought her sword down, slicing off the vampire's hand.  In a fluid movement, she swung the blade back up, severing the vampires head, a pile of brown dust falling on the shining metal blade as she held it in place.

            "Friends of yours?"  Robert sheathed his two short swords beneath his shirt and breathed deeply as he approached Faith.  The Slayer stood silently and still for a moment before shoving the sword she carried into the ground and turning to face Robert, more than impressed that he had dealt with the two vampires on his own without any trouble.

            "Well you know, I am the Slayer, friend and confidante of every random, free-roaming vampire in the world," Faith tried to write the attack off to more than it was.

            "That was more than just a random attack Faith," Robert put bluntly what she had already suspected.  "The strange getup, the weapons and especially the way they came at us just screams of a coordinated maneuver, definitely not a good thing when you're talking about vampires."

            Faith pulled the sword from the ground studying it.  Emblazoned on the top of the varnished gold handle was the engraved image of a sun and a moon with a lone figure standing between them.  Surrounding the image was a circle of some form of archaic text which Faith did not recognize.  "Interesting decorations," without looking, she tossed the sword behind her to Robert who caught it by the handle.

            When he looked at the image, he gasped.  He had seen it before and it brought to his mind many of the reasons he now found himself in Sunnydale.  "Yeah," he did not want to give away what he thought he knew, not until he was sure.  He tossed it back to Faith, pretending that it didn't bother him.  "Weird."

            "You okay?"  His change in demeanor did not go unnoticed.

            "Yeah, fine, I'm just a little worn out I guess," Faith didn't buy it.  "Hey, I've got to work the early morning shift tomorrow, think I'm going to call it a night."

            She knew he was holding something back but, with all the secrets she had kept from him in the past, he was entitled to it.  "Maybe I'll see you around."

            "Yeah, maybe."  With that, the two went their separate ways.  As they parted and Faith continued her round of the cemetery, two pairs of eyes watched her from the shadows, the Slayer never discovering their presence.  After another hour when she finally left, the two figures stepped forward.  One was of similar appearance to those who had attacked Faith and Robert, a black robe and sword in a black scabbard at his side.  The hood of the robe was down, displaying his black hair and vampiric features.

            The other was nothing like that.  She was relatively small in stature but her features, accented by the tight, one piece red leather outfit, did not hide the fact that she was strong.  By human and vampire standards, she was gorgeous, creamy skin, long blonde hair and a still young face.  She smiled as they watched Faith walk back onto the streets.

            "We should take her now," the black robed figure at her side suggested.

            "Not yet," she looked away from Faith, scanning the streets of this busy part of Sunnydale.  "It isn't her time, not yet."  After a few moments of looking, she found their target.  "But it is his," she smiled as she watched the vampire known as Spike disappear into a rundown bar.


	3. Act Two

ACT TWO 

            "Give me a beer," Spike plopped down on his usual bar stool and tossed a dollar beer at the overly proportioned man behind the counter who was lazily cleaning a dirty mug with an equally dirty white towel.  He moved slowly in reaching under the counter, popping the cap off and setting it in front of the bleached blonde.  Spike grasped it, feeling the moist condensation that had formed on the outside against his palm.

            For a moment, Spike stared into the bottle of the still slightly bubbling beverage.  This is what his life had become, locked up in his crypt during the day and trying to avoid those sent to kill him while drowning his problems in alcohol at night.  The number of attempts on his life by seemingly rogue vampires had increased significantly since Harmony had disappeared with the number of attacks averaging at least three and sometimes more per night.  Spike's new theory was that they couldn't try to kill him if they couldn't find him.

            Despite that he had been able to easily repel them; Spike was still finding the attempts on his life unnerving.  He knew something was coming, something that still believed he was allied with the Slayer and something that wanted him out of the way.  If the attempts on his life were any indication, whatever it was would be here soon.  

He considered going to Faith but he believed that would only bring himself more trouble.  Since he removed himself from her little band, the Slayer didn't seem to have much patience for him.  Although he considered it the best thing for him, Spike was finding it far too difficult to walk away from the fight entirely.

"Not too talkative tonight bud," the bartender seemed curious about Spike as the man stood directly in front of him, lazily scrubbing the mugs, leaving not much cleaner than they had been when he started.  The past few nights, Spike had usually found a confidante at the bar who he had shared at last minor bits and pieces of his life story with, leaving out the most telling details, not that many of them would have noticed with the amount of alcohol in their systems.

"Yeah, not much in the mood for it," Spike explained.  He quickly drank the beer in one mighty chug, wiping the remnants that had clung to his lips off on the long sleeve of his purple over shirt.

"Let me guess," the bartender removed the empty bottle from in front of him, replacing it with a fresh and full one.  "Women problems."  Before Spike could answer, the man continued.  "Believe me, I can sympathize with that.  Lord knows a handsome, intelligent," Spike raised his eyebrows.  "And successful guy like me has had more than his fair share of women problems.  So that's what's bothering you isn't it?"

He considered what the best way to answer was.  As easy as it was to try blaming all of his problems on Faith, Buffy, Harmony and all the way back to Drusilla, it just wasn't that simple.  "Let me tell you mate, women problems are a big part of the story of my life but I think I've only got one person to blame for the problems I'm in now."

"You made some bad choices?"

He couldn't say that.  He didn't regret falling in love with the one woman it wasn't right for him to have.  He didn't regret getting his soul back or joining the fight against evil.  He simply regretted where he had let that path lead him to now.  "You know, I think I've realized that no choice is ever really bad or good.  There's too many shades of gray, too many factors we never consider, never think that we might be affecting something until we see those effects."

"Yeah," the bartender did not hide the fact that Spike's last statement had confused him.  "Whatever you say buddy."  Knowing the bartender didn't understand or even care about Spike's ramblings; the vampire simply kept his mouth shut and tossed another dollar bill on the counter to pay for his second beer.  The bartender pushed the bill back towards him.  "On the house pal, I think you probably need it."  The bartender walked off to see towards other customers, Spike glaring at him all the way.

"About as much as you need a bite in the neck," Spike mumbled to himself, taking a quick swig of the beer and setting it back on the counter.  He sat, nursing his beer for a few more minutes, gazing at rest of the patrons.  A cloud of cigarette smoke had settles near the low roof of the building.  Most of the other customers were seated at the bar with a few occupying booths in the back of the room.  Those were people engaged in less than legitimate business and negotiations.

Without the warning of footsteps, Spike felt a sudden presence standing behind him.  He pretended not to notice, instead looking in the mirror on the wall behind the bar.  There was nothing, not his reflection and no reflections immediately behind him aside from the background of the rest of the establishment.  It seemed as though hiding away from his crypt was no longer a viable solution for avoiding those who had been sent to end his unlife.

"Greetings Spike," he heard a deep, slow and masculine voice from over his right shoulder.  He slowly turned his head to see a large figure clad in black robes with a hood obscuring his face and his hands were held behind his back.  The only other distinguishable feature was a sheathed sword with a varnished gold handle hanging from the side of his robes.  Feeling that whoever this was hadn't come alone, Spike slowly turned and looked over his left shoulder, seeing a similarly dressed figure there.

"All right," the vampire slowly rose off the bar stool, turning around to face the two figures that stood easily several inches higher than him.  "Let me guess, you're here to kill me because I can't be allowed to live, because I might be a threat to whoever you're working for.  Because I'm a disgrace, because I've betrayed everything our race stands for, because I'm the most pathetic excuse for anything you've ever seen or because you flat out just don't like me."  He looked at both of them who said nothing and made no movements in response.  "You know what, mates, I've heard it all over the past couple weeks, so why don't we just skip the long speeches, go straight to the fisticuffs and get it done with."

"We bring a message," the one on his left spoke up next, his voice sounding almost identical to the one who had spoken earlier.  Spike raised his eyebrow, displaying a hint of curiosity despite the fact that the message would probably be some variation on him dying.  "From Barris," that got Spike's attention, knowing the implications 

Spike again glanced at their robes and the swords at their sides, memories returning to him from a long time ago.  "You boys are the Cult of the Everlasting," a smile made its way to the vampire's face.  "Damn, never thought I'd see you guys again.  Looks like you made it through that last Slayer that went after you.  What was that about one hundred thirty years ago or so?"  Spike was purposefully trying to get under their skin.

"You will be silent," the one on his right commanded.

"I will?"  Spike quipped.  "You sure about that?"

"If you do not be silent," the one on his left picked up.  "Then you will not be delivered the message and we will be forced to destroy you."  Spike smiled in response to their threat as his hand dropped to the stake hidden in his front pocket.

"Well all right then, give me the message so we can get on with it."

"Barris extends an invitation for you to join us Spike," the cult member who had spoken first replied bluntly.  "She believes you have been away from our race, from your true calling as a killer, as a servant of darkness for far too long."  Before Spike could speak, the cultist continued.  "She is aware of you cursing yourself with a soul but she believes she could help you."

"Yeah, well," Spike dusted a piece of lint off of one of their robes, met by a low groan in response.  "Why don't you go back and tell the little girl," Spike thought about it for a moment.  "Does she still have those highlights in her hair?"  One of the cultists nodded in response.  "Still wear those tight little numbers?"  Another nod.  Spike shook it off, despite the fact that it had been a longtime since he had seen her and she wasn't exactly hard on the eyes.  "Well, go back and tell her I appreciate the offer but I'm not interested and that you all might want to find yourself a knew place to call home before the Slayer finds out and decides to finish what so many of those before her started."

"The Slayer will be dealt with," the second cultist remarked.

"A little over confident aren't we?"  Spike placed his hands on top of the bar and leaned back on them.  "After all, the Slayer usually manages to take out at least a couple hundred of you before you take her down.  Besides, the two of you aren't even going to be around to see that fight unless you get the hell out of here right now."

The two cultists began to draw their swords as Spike's face shifted to its demonic form.  Before they had their swords ready the loud sound of a shotgun pumping came from behind the bar.  Spike turned and the two cultists looked in the direction of the noise to see the bartender nervously holding a shotgun, his aim dancing back and forth between the three of them.  "Take it outside freaks."

Spike leaned forward to whisper in the ears of the cultists.  "Look guys, I get kicked out of this bar and then I'm pretty much not allowed to go anywhere in town for a drink, so if you wouldn't mind," he gestured to the door.  The cultists shared silent glances with each other.

"Yeah," one decided.

"Seems fair," the other one echoed the sentiment.

As the cultists began walking away, Spike tossed two more dollar bills on the bar as the bartender began to tentatively lower the shotgun.  "Sorry 'bout the trouble mate."  He followed the cultists out the swinging wooden door and into the dim parking lot, lit only by one light and the glowing neon sign hanging above the door.

Before Spike had the opportunity to say anything, the two cultists had drawn their swords and were charging towards Spike.  He reacted quickly.  As one of them closed on him, he ducked down, dodging the first sword.  He grabbed the arms of the attacker, using his superior strength to gain control over the weapon while the cultist still held it.  As his companion charged towards him, Spike used the other's sword to parry the attack, knock his weapon away and slice off the head of the second cultist, a cloud of dust appearing where he once stood.  Before the first one could fight back, Spike tossed him into a Buick parked nearby.

The cultist recovered quickly.  He moved towards Spike who lackadaisically stood about waiting for him.  He moved towards Spike, swinging his blade rapidly in a whirlwind of diagonal cuts and slices, Spike dodging, ducking and jumping out of the day of each one.  In between the rapid series of slices and cuts, Spike delivered a side kick to the cultist's stomach, immediately followed by kicking him under his chin with the same foot.  Using this to his advantage, Spike grabbed his wrist, twisting it and wrestling the sword away from him.

Once Spike had control of the weapon, the cultist recovered and lunged at him.  Spike easily dodged the series of punches and spinning kicks the other weakened vampire attempted to use against him.  He then landed another kick on his opponent's knees, sending the black-robed vampire to the ground.  Before he had the chance to get back to his feet, Spike rammed the sword through his shoulder, pinning him to the ground as he twisted it in slightly.

"Now," Spike hovered over the cultist as he writhed in pain.  "You and I are going to have a little chat," Spike again twisted the sword in his arm to add emphasis to the point that he wanted information and did not want to play games.

"I will tell you nothing," the cultist remained resolute despite the torture he faced.

"You know, somehow I figured you'd say that," Spike quickly pulled the blade from the cultist's shoulder and, before he could react, rammed it into his stomach being met by a loud scream from him in response.  "Now, the way I see it, we can do one of two things."  He twisted the sword deeper into the vampire's stomach.  "You can either tell me what I want to know or, we can have all this fun right until the sun is peaking over the building.  Just enough time for me to get into the sewers but, the shape you'll be in, I doubt you'll be able to make it."

Although the cultist did not respond, his body still squirming despite being pinned down by the blade, Spike decided to try his luck at getting some information, not having the taste for torture that he once did.  "Where's Barris?"  The vampire asked plainly.

The cultist remained defiant.  "I will never betray the cause of my people.  I will not speak."  Spike ripped the sword out of his stomach and ran it through his lower chest, met again by a loud scream from his enemy.  As he slowly twisted it, the resolve of the cultist faltered.  "All right, I will tell you."

"Talk fast," Spike tightened his grip on the sword, fearing that the sudden change of attitude could be an attempt to knock him off his guard.  After several painful seconds, the cultist finally spoke.

"The caves," he said plainly.  "You know which ones."

"Yeah," Spike answered.  "I know which ones."  True to his word, Spike pulled the blade out of the vampire and discarded on the cement ground of the parking lot.  He turned his back, beginning to walk away as he placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it.  He would have to pay her a visit to thank her for the messaging committee.  Despite his attempt to do so stealthily, Spike could hear the cultist scrambling back to his feet and taking his weapon back in his hand.

The cultist ran from behind Spike, holding his sword with both hands and raising it high, preparing to deliver a fatal blow.  "I strike in the name –" his declaration was cut short by Spike ramming a stake into his heart without turning around.

"Idiot," Spike muttered with the cigarette in his mouth.  He began walking down the street.  He would wait until tomorrow night before paying Barris a visit, giving her enough time to get word that her lackeys had been taken out.  That would be his best opportunity.

*******

            As she worked the keyboard with one and hand mouse with the other, Dawn was keeping one eye on the computer monitor and a more watchful one constantly looking over her shoulder.  She doubted very much that Ms. Cunningham, the rather stuck-up librarian, would appreciate her using her study time to lookup archaic symbols on the internet.  She had drawn a hasty sketch from the sword Faith had brought home the night before, anticipating she would find the time during her school day to do some research on it.  With the sketch sitting in her open notebook in the computer area, Dawn was now checking every resource she knew of in hopes of finding some reference to it.

            In doing so, she was finding absolutely nothing.  All of the normal starting places didn't have any reference to this symbol or anything related to it.  Her search through their books at the house last night hadn't yielded any better results.  She was now digging through backwater internet sites she discovered by following link after link after link and she was still finding nothing.

            Not able to find anything through the normal methods, Dawn began simply typing the best description of the symbol she could think of into every search engine she could find, this new effort still yielding no results.  Finally becoming annoyed with the whole thing, she took her hands off the keyboard and mouse, scooting her chair slightly away from the desk and took a deep breath.  Speaking from experience, she felt as though she should have stumbled on something by now.

            Dawn jumped as she felt a hand on her right shoulder, feeling as though Ms. Cunningham had caught her using her library time for less than scholastic activities.  She hesitantly turned her head, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw Kennedy standing behind her.  "Watcha doin'?"  Kennedy pulled up the chair next to Dawn and sat down, looking partially at her computer screen and partially at her.

            "Being scared half to death by you for starters," Dawn whispered, not wanting to attract any additional attention to herself that the small shriek she gave when startled hadn't already earned her.  "Aside from that," she moved the chair back to the computer desk and resumed her searching.  "Trying to find some reference to that symbol on the swords from those guys that attacked Faith and Robert last night."

            "Any luck?"  Kennedy leaned closer to Dawn, reading what was on the monitor as Dawn continued to browse through sites on archaic languages, symbols and their meanings.

            "None," she replied bluntly.  "And by none I mean absolutely, one-hundred percent nothing.  No vague references, no descriptions that could possibly be what we're looking for if they were flipped upside down and looked at through a mirror.  Nothing at all."

            "So, you're trying to say that you didn't find anything?"  Dawn gave Kennedy a hard glare.  "Sorry," she saw that Dawn didn't take the joke in the sense that it was meant.  As she watched Dawn work through the various web-sites for several minutes, Kennedy had an idea.  "You try the Watcher's Council?"

            "Huh?"  Was the only response Dawn saw as appropriate.

            "Have you tried accessing the Watcher's Council online database?"

            Again, Dawn was stumped.  "Oh yeah of course, I would have done that had I realized that the Watcher's Council had an online database.  Since when does the council have an online database?"  Dawn could think of more than a few times where such a resource would have been useful.

            Kennedy nudged her way closer to Dawn and took control of the keyboard, typing in a rather long URL into the address bar on the web-browser.  "Since the big, bad First decided to take out most of the council's records, books, volumes and the like.  What remained of the council decided it might be wise to digitize what information was left, just incase something else decided to pickup with the apocalypse where the First left off."  Kennedy tapped the enter button with her index finger.  A page with a simple white background, black text and two boxes designated 'username' and 'password' appeared on the screen.

            "I take it you have both of those?"  Dawn glanced at Kennedy who glanced back at her.  "You know the web-site but you don't have a password to access it?"  Dawn was making an assumption based on the expression Kennedy gave her.  "Lots of help that's going to be."

            "Well, I figured if I got us there, you might be able to get us in."  Dawn nodded and went to work on the computer as Kennedy watched, resting her elbow on the desk and head in her hand.  "Can't expect me to do all the work after all."  Dawn spent the better part of the hour loading various programs and breaking through different levels of encryption but always running into another obstacle as soon as she broke through one.

            "One thing's for sure," Dawn took her hands off the keyboard and attempted to rub away the now growing pain in her temples.  "The council certainly doesn't want just anyone looking at their records."  Dawn thought of a new way to approach the problem.  She placed her hands back on the keyboard and typed 'rgiles' for the username section and tabbed down to the password box.  She quickly ran her fingers across the keyboard and pressed the enter button.

            "Someday you're going to have to tell me the story behind that," Kennedy remarked after seeing what Dawn had typed for the password.  The screen flashed that her username and password combination had been approved and then shifted to another plain white screen with another box marked simply by the word 'search' printed above it.  Having no better way to proceed, she typed a vague description of the symbol into the search box.  After a moment, another white background page loaded with a single link telling her that one match had been found.

            Dawn clicked on the link which brought up a picture identical to the one she had drawn and to the image on the sword Faith had taken from the vampires.  She scrolled past the image to the short paragraph of text.  "Symbol of the Cult of the Everlasting," Dawn read it aloud, Kennedy following along with her.  "A group of vampires that worshipped and followed one known as the Everlasting."  She finished reading and she and Kennedy shared a look of confusion.

            "Well look on the bright side," Kennedy remarked as Dawn sighed, feeling that was of no help whatsoever.  "We know more than we did about it."

            "Still doesn't tell as much," Dawn countered.  She closed at the council database and returned to a standard search engine.  She typed in 'Cult of the Everlasting' and pressed the search button.  Of the several results that appeared, many seeming to be nothing more than an odd combination of the words in different places, Dawn picked one that looked as though it may provide something useful.  The link brought up a reference on a web-site she had visited in the past for information on various demons.  It had a short listing on the Cult of the Everlasting.  "A cult of vampires that worshipped a mysterious figure known as the Everlasting," Dawn again read the description aloud.  "The cult and presumably their leader were wiped out in the twelfth century by an army under General Segur and a peasant woman named Erika."

            "So if they were wiped out hundreds of years ago," Kennedy began to see some of the troubling connections.  "What are they doing attacking Faith and Robert in a graveyard?"

            "Posers?"  Dawn considered the unlikely possibility that it was simply some random vampires wanting to imitate the cult for prestige purposes.

            "Kind of doubt it," Kennedy answered plainly.

            "Yeah, me too."

            "Ms. Summers," the shrewd voice came from behind the two girls.  They looked back to see Ms. Cunningham standing behind them with her arms crossed, tapping her foot on the floor and looking rather displeased.  "I do not believe that looking at such things is the most productive use of your time.  Perhaps you would be better suited to find a quiet desk to read at."

            With a few subtle clicks of the mouse, Dawn cleared the web-browser's history and closed it before standing up, Kennedy collecting her backpack and following.  "You're right Ms. Cunningham, we were just leaving."  The two left the library, quickly heading for Faith's office.

*******

            Robert sat by himself in the Chinese restaurant, sipping hot tea and gazing at the menu.  He had decided to take his lunch break while there wasn't much going on and use the opportunity to review something that had been troubling him since his and Faith's encounter with the odd vampires from the night before.  That information was tucked inside a manila folder he had sitting in front of him on the table.

            "Take your order officer?"  The waiter, dressed in black pants, a white shirt and black tie slid up next to his table, a small writing tablet in his hand with a pen at the ready.

            "An order of fried rice and two orders of egg rolls please," he quickly ordered and handed the menu back to the waiter who jotted down his request and quickly headed for the kitchen to put the order in.  Confident that the waiter was out of the way and that no one else had a good view of his table; Robert grasped the folder and opened it up.

            The first piece of paper contained with in was a police report from the Los Angeles Police Department.  He flipped past that and the accompanying detective and crime scene reports, having read them all hundreds of times.  After the multitude of reports, Robert finally came to what he wanted to look at, printouts of several dozen digital photographs taken at the scene of the crime detailed in these reports.

            He relived the memories as he looked at the pictures of the two mutilated bodies.  Robert knew the picture he wanted wasn't until nearly the end of the stack but he forced himself to look at all of them, to remind himself of at least part of the reason he had done so much to join the fight he was now in.  Finally, he reached the picture he wanted.  Scrawled in blood above the two mutilated bodies lying in a bed was the image of a sun, a moon, a lone figure standing between them and a circle of text surrounding the entire gruesome picture.

            There was no mistaking it.  It had long been a theory of his but it seemed that it was now confirmed.  The vampires that had attacked him and Faith the night before were working for the same group that had killed his family.  He closed the folder as the waiter brought his lunch.  He ate though he was not hungry, sickened almost at the revelation.  He did realize one thing, despite the misgiving he had been having about coming to Sunnydale, this was the right place for him to be.

*******

            The rackety, old cargo ship was now only a few minutes away from pulling into dock at Sunnydale and Jim Moran, along with the rest of the crew, could not feel better about it.  They had a long journey, during which over half of the crew had died from what the captain, first office and ship's doctor all described as a mysterious illness.  Jim knew better though.  He had seen one of the bodies before the doctor had hauled it away.  He had seen the odd marks on the neck of that man.  He knew the captain and others were just trying to keep it quiet so as not to provoke a panic but he knew there was something on this ship.

            Despite his reservations, Jim attended to his duties.  He walked through the dark and musty cargo holds, making sure everything was secured for their final docking in Sunnydale.  As he entered the furthest hold he thought he saw something move in the shadows between the crates of cargo.  He shined his flashlight on the rusted metal walls, seeing nothing.  

As he walked through to the back of the hold, he heard something behind him.  He turned around in just enough time to see the black-robed figure ram a sword through his stomach.  As he fell off the blade and collapsed onto the floor, he managed to stay conscious for long enough to see dozens of figures in the same type of clothing, all with swords hanging from their sides, surrounding him. 


	4. Act Three

ACT THREE 

            The sounds of a horse at full gallop, hoods clapping against the dirt ground, began to awake the soldiers as it rang throughout the lines of tents that formed the army's camp.  The rider purposefully charged through the camp, soldiers rising out of their tents to see what the cause of the commotion was.  The rider did not stop until he reached the tent of General Segur where he brought his horse to an abrupt stop and dismounted.  The general was soon out of his tent, dressed only in a shirt and pants, not having time to place his armor or formal clothing on.

            "General I cry your pardon," the rider gave a hasty salute to his commander before he could say anything.  He recognized the soldier as one of their scouts who had been sent out once the army made camp to search for any other enemy positions that could pose a threat to them.  Before the rider could continue with his report, the woman they all knew as Erika emerged from the general's tent wearing a soft blue gown.  He ignored what that likely meant and continued with what was important.  "But I bring urgent news."  He tried to refrain from looking too hard at Erika.

            "Speak," the general commanded.

            "An army of the everlasting marches towards us now," the General did not believe what he was hearing.  "They must have slipped through our nets, I do not know how they could have alluded as but they are converging on our position as we speak."

            "How long?"  It was Erika that almost instinctively assumed control over the situation much to the surprise of the scout and various other command level soldiers that had gathered around Segur's tent to hear the report.  "And how many?"  She threw in as he was opening his mouth to answer the first question.  That seemed to be the questions he was least interested in answering.

            "No more than an hour," that was met by gasps and various whispering amongst the leaders of the army, shocked that their enemy could mobilize and move their forces so quickly.  "Their numbers were too difficult to count in the dark.  They ride without the aid of torches or any form of light."  He hesitated briefly, having just a little more to say.  Segur, Erika and the other looked to him, wanting the rest of the information quickly.  "But I estimate their numbers to be in the thousands."

            Erika, still acting as though this was her army, approached a group of the unit commanders who had gathered around.  "Wake everyone up, get them ready for battle.  Tell them that once the enemy army is broken we will storm the castle, no turning back, no surrendering and no retreat."  She ran inside the tent as the soldiers then turned to General Segur.  Despite her skill as a fighter, most of them never understood why the general would often yield authority to that peasant woman and were hesitant to follow her orders until he confirmed them.

            "Move all of our forces to the bottom of the hill," Segur began issuing his own orders, gesturing in the direction which he wanted the army relocated to.  "Have infantry set to receive a charge and archers prepared to do so as well.  Cavalry be prepared to engage.  I want all forces prepared to engage before the hour as up.  This ends tonight!"  As the general disappeared inside his tent, the rest of the command unit went to work in carrying out the orders they had been given.

            Within forty-five minutes, the army was arrayed in a standard formation at the bottom of the hill.  They had extinguished all of their torches, allowing them to hide a degree in the dark night.  Before assembling at the bottom of the hill, soldiers had lit torches along the side of it so as to illuminate the approach of the enemy army whenever it came.  At the center of their lines, General Segur sat, in full armor, atop his steed with Erika next to his side.  He gave the Slayer, who was dressed in a simple white shirt, brown pants and black cloak with chain mail underneath, a knowing look, a great deal being exchanged between them without any words being said.

            Soon, they heard the distant sound of drums coming from over the other side of the hill.  General Segur gave the order for the archers to ready their bows as shadowy figures began to be seen moving slowly down the hill.  Lighting flaming arrows, the archers drew their bows back, taking aim into the center of the enemy formations.  As hundreds of shapes pored over the hill, the dark figure's speed increased, bursting into a full charge.

            "Fire!"  Segur shouted as the enemy army drew closer.  Fiery streaks from the arrows lit the sky ablaze as hundreds soured from the lines of archers and into the enemy lines.  Flashes of fiery clouds of dust appeared as the arrows landed on mark, vanquishing their targets.  Without Segur having to give the order, the second unit or archers unleashed a volley while the first reloaded.  These landed on target as well, significantly weakening the first ranks of vampires.

            Segur drew his sword and formed up with the rest of the Calvary.  Erika readied her weapon as well, a wooden staff with points on each end and followed the general into the ranks of horse mounted soldiers.  "Order infantry units to begin their advance," the general ordered his new captain who was on his left-hand side.  The captain issued the orders for the infantry units which had been designated in their hasty planning session to begin moving on the enemy army.

            Hundreds of soldiers readied their weapons and began marching forward, their armor clanking as they moved in to engage their foes.  "Prepare to charge!"  Segur held his sword up high.  The hundreds of mounted soldiers drew their swords and readied their weapons, following the general's lead.  Segur pointed his sword forward.  "Charge!"  The mounted soldiers, led by Segur and Erika charged through the ranks of slowly advancing infantry on a collision path towards the hostile army.

            Arrows flew through the sky, impacting against the ranks of the vampire army as Segur, Erika and their units of horsemen drew closer, almost within attack range.  They could see them now, the hideous faces of the Everlasting's demon and vampire army.  Erika readied her weapon, knowing she would soon only have seconds to act.  Segur watched and attempted to model his composure after her own.

            In a violent clash of steel and flesh, Segur's cavalry impacted against the frontlines of the demon army.  Segur swiped at them, severing heads of each vampire and demon that dared to cross into his path.  Likewise, his men attacked, some falling from their horses when they were impaled against the spears of the vampires.  They fought valiantly, their swords, spears and other hand weapons clashing with those of the vampires and demons.  Horse mounted archers in the fray of the battle provided support to the fighters where support was needed.

            Erika effortlessly killed six vampires with her spear in the opening seconds of the battle.  As her horse went down, stabbed by the swords of three vampires, she leapt off it to her feet, stabbing two nearby vampires who were standing back to back as she landed.  She continued fighting, dodging and parrying the swords of the vampires as they swung at her and stabbing them through their lowered defenses.  She continued fighting, killing a great number of vampires until she felt a great pain on the back of her knees.

            As she collapsed, she looked behind her to see a vampire approaching with a great axe.  He remained calm, solely focused on her as the battle, with his side beginning to lose ground, waged around them.  "So you are the Slayer that is causing us so much trouble," he began swinging the axe as he approached her.  "Somehow, I expected you would be taller."  She narrowly rolled out of the way as the vampire rammed the axe into the ground where her head would have been.

            Seeing Erika's predicament, Segur sliced off the head of the demon blocking his path and began riding to her.  She rolled out of the way of another axe blow, attempting to regain control of her weapon only to have the axe fall between it and her hand.  She looked back up at the vampire as the blade of the axe swung towards her face and the sounds of the ferocious battle being waged all around her suddenly grew silent.

*******

            When Faith awoke from the dream, she was breathing heavily enough for it to be considered panting.  That one had been more real than the last, she had felt every move, every attack Erika had made and every hit she had taken.  She felt the cold night air, the dirt beneath her feet and the rumble of the ground as the battle raged.  It was almost frightening, for Faith at least, to have been riding into the mass of vampires and demons.  She couldn't understand how Erika didn't even slightly falter in the face of such a horrible thing.

            As was becoming a habit with her when she woke up from one of these disturbing dreams, she rolled over and checked the time on her alarm clock, twelve thirty in the morning.  She threw her head back on the pillow without any desire to go back to sleep.  The only comfort she was able to find in any of this was that some parts of the dreams were beginning to make sense though that only disturbed her more.

            Dawn and Kennedy's discovery about the meaning of the symbol on the weapons carried by the attackers from the night before, along with the references to the Everlasting in her dream all but confirmed that she and Erika were fighting the same group in some form or another.  The scary part was what that meant.  According to Dawn's information, that group of vampires was supposed to have been wiped out but here they were in Sunnydale.  If they had been simply keeping quiet for the past few hundred years, something had brought them out of hiding now and Faith new that couldn't mean anything good.

            All in all, the answers they had found only raised more disturbing questions.  She needed more answers.  About this Cult of the Everlasting, about Erika, about everything she was now faced with.  Having nowhere else to turn at the moment, she picked up the phone off her nightstand and dialed a number.

            As his phone rang, Robin Wood was reminded of the fact that he should be sleeping.  As he sat in his sanctum, as he liked to call it, scanning through various books his mother's watcher had left in his care, he glanced at the caller id on the cordless phone sitting atop his desk.  As soon as he saw the familiar name and number displayed upon it, he quickly pressed the talk button.

            "Faith?"  He couldn't imagine anyone else in the Summers' household that would be awake at this hour of the night.  "Hello?"  He didn't receive any response at first.

            She didn't exactly know what to say.  His voice sounded tired, like he had been awakened by her call which was the last thing she had wanted to do.  "Hey boss, sorry for calling so late," she decided it would be best to get the apology out of the way sooner rather than later.  "I must have woke you up."  The more she talked, the less sure she became of her reason for calling the first place.

            "Well, I admit you should have woke me up but no, I was already awake, just catching up on a little reading."  That reminded Faith of why she had decided to call.  "And what are you doing up at this hour of the night little lady?"  He more or less knew the answer but wanted to make sure that his concern was justified.  There were of course a million reasons for why the Slayer would be awake this time of night aside from what he was thinking.

            "Well, that's kind of why I was calling," Faith swung her feet off the side of the bed and onto the floor.  She slowly stood up, placing her red silk robe on over her clothes.  "Had another dream, they're getting more real.  Dawn and Kennedy are piecing together a few leads but I wanted to see if maybe you found out anything about them."

            "Bits and pieces of nothing," was his discouraging answer.  "I've been going through the journals and reference materials that Crowley left in my care and there's some references to a Slayer named Erika that was around during the twelfth century but everything is pretty vague, almost no details on her."

            Faith was silent for a moment, trying to remember any details from her dream or the information Dawn and Kennedy had uncovered that might be relevant to his search.  "Anything about something called the Cult of the Everlasting?"  That seemed to be a prominent feature in both her dreams and the information Dawn and Kennedy had located.  The only sound Faith heard for a moment was the sound of pages turning in a book as he scanned the volume in front of him for information.

            "Again, just vague references," Wood scanned down the page, using his finger to keep his place.  "All it says is that Erika fought the Cult of the Everlasting all across Europe in the twelfth century until she was finally killed."

            "Killed by what?"  Faith suddenly felt the need to earn as much as possible about what was going on, in hopes of understanding what she was experiencing.

            "It doesn't say," Wood finished scanning the page long entry on Erika.  "Look Faith, is there something else going on here?"  He picked up on the distress present in her voice.  He continued before she could respond.  "Sorry if I'm assuming a lot here but I'm starting to think there's more than just weird dreams going on."

            "You might say that."

            "Anything I need to know about?"

            "I'll fill you in the morning," she didn't want to take up anymore of his evening than she already had with her problems, knowing he had better things he could be spending his time on.  "Thanks for the help boss."

            "It's no trouble Faith; I'll see you in the morning."

            Faith leaned against the wall as she hung up the phone.  She closed her eyes and ran her fingers through her dark hair wishing for any good excuse to not go back to sleep.  Just when she was prepared to surrender to fatigue, the phone rang, the caller id displaying Robert's cell-phone number.  "Hello."

            "Faith, I'll be there in about fifteen minutes.  There's something you need to see."

*******

With a large, police issue flashlight in her hand, Faith followed Robert up the walkway onto the deck of the aging cargo vessel _Seven Sea Wanderer_.  There were no obvious signs of trouble amongst the half unloaded cargo containers, various out of date tools and rusted deck plates with chipping gray paint.  It was evident that the ship was deserted but that was hardly anything to not be expected from one whose crew had been at sea for too long and anxious to spend their first night on dry land.

            "Hey Robbie," Faith slowly shined the flashlight he had given her out of his patrol car across the deck, scanning for the reason he might have brought her here.  He had been less than forthcoming with her on the short car ride to the docks.  "Not that I wouldn't enjoy a good cruise as much as the next girl but I was thinking something maybe a little more in the Bahamas area."  Robert, who was walking several feet ahead of her towards the center of the ship, did not seem to be paying attention to her jocular complaints.

            "You know," she continued as she watched a rat scurry across the deck, almost running over her feet as it did so.  "Something with a cabin that had a great view of the water a soft bed and mini-bar maybe a nice buffet, drinks with those little umbrellas in them," she smirked.  "Cabana boys."  Robert stopped walking, turned around for a moment and glared at her.  "Hey, at least I got your attention.  So would you mind telling me now what we're doing here?  Especially what we're doing here at one o'clock on the morning."

            Robert reached his destination and tucked his smaller black flashlight under his arm as he turned the wheel to open the bulkhead door that led into the cargo holds.  "I was dispatched to this ship earlier today.  I wanted to wait until the investigators and crime scene units cleared out before I brought you down."  He effortlessly pulled the heavy metal door open and led their way inside.  "Watch the first step," he used his flashlight to illuminate a series of metal stairs leading down which originated at the door.

            After descending the stairs, they began walking through a long and straight corridor, both of them shining their flashlights down the path.  Faith didn't see what was going on.  All she saw was rusty metal walls, overly loud floors and water dripping from poorly maintained red pipes on the ceiling.  When Faith finally decided to ask for more of an explanation, Robert began to offer one.

            "I met with the ship's captain and coast guard officials that were on scene when I got here.  When this ship set to sea, it had a crew of forty-two.  The majority of them were young to middle-aged, healthy for the most part and experienced sailors."  At the end of the straight path, Robert and Faith ducked under a bulkhead as they followed the only path they could to the left and down another straight path.

            "I'm sure we're reaching a point because that bed and pillow is just looking better and better," Faith wasn't as annoyed as she pretended to be, she simply wanted this unusual behavior explained in something resembling a timely manner.  "Not that dull gray hallways on an abandoned ship aren't exhilarating."

            "The ship departed with forty-two people onboard," Robert ignored her attitude and continued disseminating the information.  "When the ship got to Sunnydale, only twenty were alive.  The rest had been killed."  Robert reached another sealed door and twisted the wheel lock to open it.  He led Faith into one of the main cargo holds of the ship.  Without any crates or cargo containers, the room seemed rather massive and open.  "Now, wanting to avoid panic, the captain told the crew it must have been some sort of disease they picked up at their last port call.  Now take in mind," Robert shined his flashlight along the walls, looking for something, before he continued walking to the back of the hold.  "The coroner's office hasn't released an official cause of death but I got a look at a few of the bodies," he reached into the back pocket on his jeans and produced several Polaroid photos.

            "See for yourself," he handed them to Faith.  She flipped through them.  Each image of a dead body sprawled out in the hold of the ship was followed by a picture of the two telling marks upon each of their necks.  After seeing the first few sets, she hastily made here way through the rest, seeing the same thing on everyone.  "What's not in those pictures is that there were other marks; on the thighs, wrists and several other places."

            "So more than one vamp," Faith deduced plainly.  "That's not entirely unheard of, sometimes they travel in packs, migrating from one town to another.  A dark cargo hold on a ship with a crew full of healthy people sounds like the perfect vamp pleasure cruise with all you can eat buffet for a group looking to soak up some Hellmouthy goodness."

            "Not denying that," Robert negotiated a corner around the only two stacks of shipping crates left in the hold, squeezing through the narrow space between them.  "But how often do we see organized attacks by vamps in the same clothes, carrying the same weapons."  Faith couldn't deny that that was a somewhat rare occurrence.

            "So you think those vamps are related to that vamps that were on this ship?"  She was beginning to see how Robert could have made a connection but she didn't see any evidence for it aside from conjecture.  "Thinking there's some big, evil group of vampire coming to Sunnydale?"  The more she talked, the more she was talking herself into it.  That would certainly be in line with her dreams and the references they had found thus far.

            Robert came to an abrupt halt and shined his flashlight on the tall wall in front of him.  "You tell me," Faith looked away from him and towards where he had pointed to with the light.  Scrawled in blood on the wall was the same symbol that was present on the weapons of those who attacked them, the symbol of the Cult of the Everlasting.  The length of it easily covered the height of the wall while the width was noticeably larger than Robert and Faith standing side be side.

            "Think I'm starting to see what you mean."

            "Yeah," Robert moved his flashlight off the symbol and turned away from it to look at Faith whose eyes were transfixed upon it.  "And if you want my opinion, we're in a whole lot of trouble here.  Whoever these vamps are, they're well organized with a whole lot of resources at their disposal and this isn't something they've been planning just for a short little while."

            Faith could tell by the look in his eyes that he was basing the last part of his statement on more than just theory and guesswork.  "What are you talking about Robert?  I mean, yeah everything makes it look like these guys know what they're doing but I can't see how they're any different from every other villain of the week."

            "Just trust me on this one Faith," Robert didn't want to reveal everything he suspected until he was surer about his theories.  He looked away from her, hurt to be keeping things from her despite what he saw as a necessity to do so.  "If you think you can trust me."

            Seeing his noticeable change in demeanor, Faith softly put her hand on Robert's cheek, forcing him to look back into her eyes.  "Hey, it's five by five.  Who knows what I'd do with myself if I had all the answers anyways.  You know I've always trusted you and whatever's going on, we'll stop it."

            "I hope you're right Faith."

            "Yeah," she glanced up at the massive symbol again.  "Me too."

*******

            Spike stomped down the unbeaten path towards the caves on the edge of town.  This path took him through dense trees and other foliage, grass rising well past his ankles and vines causing him to loose balance in several places.  Despite that, he still saw it as a safer and better way to approach.  All other, easier paths to the caves would know doubt be guarded if he knew Barris the way he thought he did.

            The trees and bushes finally gave way to a clearing with the caves only a few feet in front of him.  It was obvious which one was his intended destination.  He could see torchlight burning from within and two figures in black robes with cloaks covering their heads standing in the entryway.  The vampire considered that they were making finding them a little too easy but he also thought about Barris.  If he was right about her, she would want to be found, by him at least.

            Seeming as though he didn't have a concern or care, Spike left the cover of the trees and approached the entrance to the cave.  As he had expected, the two sentries standing on either side of the cave entrance lowered the massive halberds they carried, blocking Spike's path into the cave.  "Halt," they commanded in unison.  "You will turn around or face certain death."

            They didn't recognize him, Spike was counting on that.  He began stumbling and swaying about on his feet as he approached, pulling a half-empty whiskey bottle from the inner pocket of his trench coat to add to the allusion.  "Excuse me boys," he did his best to fake an intoxicated voice and demeanor.  "But I seem to have taken a bit of a wrong turn," he stumbled forward, almost collapsing on them, causing them to step forward, preparing to brace him if need be.  His plan was working.  "Do you think you all could point me in the direction of the _Drunken Fisherman?"  He stumbled, again falling into one of the guards who pushed him away._

            "You will leave this place now," the guard commanded.  "Or being lost will be the least of your problems."  Spike slowly regained his footing to further the ruse.  He against stumbled towards the guards, this time prepared to deliver the blow he would need to get inside.  "You will leave now!"  The guard again insisted.  Both guards reached out to grab him and send him on his way but this did not go as planned.  As each grabbed one of his arms, Spike knocked their arms away.  In a flash, a stake shot out from each of his sleeves and he impaled both of the guards in the chest, turning them into clouds of dust.

            "I guess the cult's recruiting standards have gone down," Spike retracted the stakes into his sleeves and took a long swig of the whiskey before tossing the bottle onto the ground.  "Now Barris, time for you to have a little chat with a real big bad."  He strolled inside the cave, cautiously moving through the maze of rocks and the dirt path.  Easily enough, the path led him directly where he wanted to go.  He came to a ledge the overlooked an opening into another large part of the cave.  Standing below him, he saw eight of the cloaked figures standing in front of a relatively small woman with long blonde hair dressed in a one piece, red leather shirt and pants that showed a great deal of skin and left nothing to the imagination.

            "You always were a looker doll," Spike commented to himself as he gazed at Barris from above.  As far as he could tell, they hadn't noticed him yet and Spike wasn't keen on the idea of charging down there with eight cultists nearby.  He watched for several minutes as Barris carried on a quiet conversation with the other cultists.  He prepared to head down there when they disappeared.

            "Come on down Spike," Barris did not look up at him, simply turned her back and began slightly walking away from the ledge.  "Something tells me you were waiting for them to leave after all."  She sat down on a flat rock, seductively crossing her legs as Spike jumped down to her level.

            "Hello Barris," he began walking towards her after making sure the cultists weren't waiting to stake him in the back.  "It's been a while.  Got to admit, never expected to see you in Sunnydale of all places.  I mean, yeah the atmosphere and all is great but figured it was a little out of the way for your types."

            "Plus you probably thought we had all been eradicated," Barris smirked.  "You and everyone else," she confidently added.  She stood up and began slowly walking towards Spike, her hips swinging with every move.  "That's the great thing about this modern world we live in Spike."  She began to circle him, placing a finger on his shoulder and delicately tracing it across the back of his jacket and to his other shoulder.  "Plant one little piece of information in the right place, even if it's a lie and it spreads like the most glorious plague."

            "Cut the crap babe," Spike wasn't interested in her clever analogies or half-truths.  "However you survived that last Slayer that went after you and stayed hidden the last few decades is beyond me and I don't really care either.  I also don't care about what you're doing in Sunnydale, I just want to know what the hell you're thinking sending your goons to kill me."

            "Just following orders," she stood in front of him, putting her arms behind her back and giving him a school-girl smile.  "I do have others to answer to."

            "Don't give me that Barris," Spike harshly snapped back.  "We both know he's dead.  You're pathetic little cult here might have survived but word reached vampires around the world that he was dead so don't try to play these little games with me."  Evident by her expression, she took offense to that statement.  "Tell me why you're trying to kill me?"

            "We heard, from numerous and various sources that you were allied with a Slayer.  Even had gone and gotten yourself a soul," she raised her eyebrows.  "We considered you to be a threat and saw it best to eliminate that threat before we began putting your plans into motion."

            "Yeah, well, might want to come up with assassins better than the Ellis brothers if you're looking to get rid of me," Spike recalled the rather quick and violent encounter with the trio of southern vampires who had come to hunt him down weeks before.

            "I figured you would at least find the Tarical demons to be something of a challenge though I see you survived them as well," though Spike had already made the connection, he gained a certain satisfaction from having Barris confirm it.

            "Yeah well, hate to tell you, but your information is a little out of date," he wanted to move on and get this conversation to the end it would inevitably come to.  "I told the Slayer I don't want anything else to do with her.  I'm out of this fight and the rest of your little cult had better get the message and let me rest in peace for once in my life."

            "Then you might be interested in my offer," Barris seemed intent on not letting him get out of things so easily.

            "To join you?"  Spike had actually thought she wouldn't be stupid enough to try playing that card again, no doubt having heard about what happened to her last messengers.  "Sorry babe, as much as I don't want to fight on the Slayer's side, I also don't want to be on the other end of her stake."

            "But think about it Spike," she took a step closer to him, running her hand down his cheek, touching his lips with one finger as she gazed into his eyes.  "We have plans Spike, plans that will change everything as we know it.  This town, this world, everything will be ours and you can be a part of that Spike.  Soon the Slayer won't be able to interfere."

            "Barris," he took her hand in both of his and guided it away from his face.  "You're insane."  He let go of her hand and began to walk away only to have several cultists emerge from the cave, blocking his path.  He quickly turned back towards Barris who now had several cultists standing to either side of her as well.

            "You know one of the funny things about insane people Spike," as Barris talked, her voice no longer soft and playful as it was before but filling with a malicious hate, the cultists formed a circle around Spike that slowly began to close.  "They don't take well to having friendly offers rejected," Barris disappeared into the caves as the cultists closed in on Spike and went to work.


	5. Act Four

ACT FOUR 

            "Sorry to have kept you out so late," Robert just noticed the time on his watch as he walked Faith to the door of the Summers' residence.  She had rather strongly insisted that he simply leave and not walk her to the door but he gave her a believable excuse that it was the least he could do since he had cost her much needed sleep.

            Despite her protests, it did make Faith feel good, to have someone who seemed to care about her in that kind of way.  "Well, I could think of a few other things I'd rather be out late doing aside from tromping around on an old cargo ship that spent the past couple weeks as a vamp nest but," they both laughed as they reached her door.  She unlocked it and put her hand on the knob but did not go inside, turning instead to look at Robert again.  "What can I say, you know how to show a Slayer a good time."

            As he and Faith gazed into each other's eyes, Robert suddenly felt as though he was overstaying his welcome.  "Hey, I've probably taken up enough of your night.  I'm sure you have to work tomorrow, I better get going.  Thanks for coming tonight Faith, I'll keep in touch."  She grabbed his arm as he started to walk off and he turned to look at her.  There was a subtle kindness and curiosity in her eyes, something Robert could remember seeing on only a handful of occasions in the two years he had known her in the past.

            "Robert," her voice was soft, emotional but strong as always.  "I know, I've already said it but I'm sorry for what I told you last week, after the deal with Preston.  The truth of it is, I think I need you, here, in my life, helping me with this fight and the last thing I want is for you to leave me alone."

            "Thanks Faith," that was a weight lifted from his shoulder.  He had tried to play down the way her attitude had made him feel when they had last talked about it but could not deny it now.  "That really means a lot.  You know for a little while, I was starting to think if coming to Sunnydale was really the best idea I've ever had."

            "You know," Faith saw the opportunity to try and get an answer to a question that had been hanging over them since Robert arrived in town.  "I don't think you ever really told me why you came to Sunnydale."  Before Robert could give her the excuse she had heard before, Faith continued.  "The real reason you came to Sunnydale that is."

            "Does it really matter?"  As much as he wanted to tell Faith the whole truth, Robert still wasn't ready to.  He saw the furrowed brow she gave him and knew he would have to give her more than that.  "Look Faith, I have a lot of reasons for being here that I'm not really comfortable about talking about yet.  I think you can relate to that."

            Faith couldn't deny she had acted in much the same way when Robert tried to get her to talk about her past when she was in prison.  "Yeah I can but I do hope it takes less than you almost dying to get you to open up to me someday.  After all," she took another step closer to him, feeling his warm breath on her face.  "You don't quite have the stamina I have you know."

            "You sure about that?"  His voice was soft and seductive.  He knew now wasn't the time for this and wasn't sure how they had gotten to this position so quickly when only and hour before they had been trolling through a dirty old cargo ship, looking at bloodstained walls and pictures of vampire victims.

            "Wouldn't mind finding out," Faith melted closer to him, running her fingernails teasingly down Robert's chest, his muscles tensing in response to her touch.  She could feel the heavy breathes moving through his chest as her hand rested on him.  He grabbed her hand, wrapping his fingers in-between hers.  With his other hand, he reached around her, placing it on the small of her back and pulling her closer.  A powerful smile appeared on the Slayer's face as her breathing also increased.  "Whadya say?"

            For a moment, as he gazed into her eyes, all his cares and problems in the world disappeared.  For that moment, he wanted to be with her; wanted nothing else in the world.  Then, in the time it had taken for this to feel so right, it suddenly felt very wrong.  "Faith what are we doing?"  Even as he posed the question, he still held her in his arms, not wanting to let go.

            In that same moment, she realized it too.  "Yeah," Faith gently pulled herself out of Robert's arms.  "Guess this does seem kind of silly, what with the whole vampire invasion thing and all."  Until that moment, she hadn't given the pending danger a thought.  Something about being there with him had made her forget about it all, the vampires, the dreams, everything except the moment.

            Robert sighed, taking a step back and away from her, giving them both space.  "You know, as far as timing goes, you and I don't exactly have the best in the world."  Robert thought back to the last time they had these kinds of feelings when Faith was in prison and he was a guard.  "Then again, I guess we can't control whenever evil forces decide to start coming after us."

            "Seems to happen on Tuesdays," Faith offhandedly remarked.  "Hey, look at the time," she deemed it best to try ending their conversation at that point before it moved back onto topics they didn't want to touch on.  "I go to bed right now and I should just about be back to sleep in enough time for another creepy dream before waking up way too early."

            "I've got the day off tomorrow but I'm going to go in and check to see what the crime scene people came up with.  They might have found something on the ship that we overlooked during the initial investigation.  Don't know if it'll be of any use but it's worth a shot I suppose, maybe the vamps will have left some clue behind we can use," given the way this group was operating, Robert believed anything piece of information might be useful to them.

            "Don't need clues," Faith gave a confident smirk, attempting to play down the situation.  "Just a good stake, maybe a sword or an axe or two, takes care of most vamps I know.  I mean, these guys don't operate much like normal vamps but seems to me like the same things take care of them."

            As Robert was opening his mouth to say goodnight, the sound of tires screeching rang out in the darkness.  As the black SUV with its lights off slid to a stop in front of the house, Robert reacted instinctively, drawing his Glock handgun from the off-duty holster at his side.  Faith acted in a similar manner, drawing a dagger hidden under her shirt on the small of her back.  Both of them ran towards the vehicle as the back passenger side door slid open and a limp figure was tossed out.

            When the vehicle sped off, Robert took aim at its rear window while Faith rushed to whoever had been tossed out.  As the distance between him and the vehicle increased, he lowered his weapon and holstered it, having a feeling that shooting now wouldn't do any good.  As he turned around, he looked at Faith, crouched over the figure clad in a black shirt, black pants and black trench coat with bleached blonde hair.

            Spike did not move as Faith knelt down next to him.  Robert soon joined her at the vampire's side, seeing the extent of what had happened to him.  His face was bruised, bloody and beaten and they both imagined the blood and bruises went far beyond his face.  His shirt was torn with cuts across his chest.  They had however left his coat in remarkably good condition.

            "He's alive," Faith stated the obvious, kneeling down next to the barely conscious vampire.  Spike's eyes fluttered open as he heard her voice.  He briefly wondered how he had gotten there, the last thing he remembered was fighting and consequently being beaten in the cave.

            "Quite evident by the lack of dust doll," the vampire wryly replied.

*******

            "You say you don't know how many of them there were?"  Wood and Xander, who Faith had called after they had gotten Spike into the house along with Robert and the Slayer herself, had been tag teaming Spike with questions for the past fifteen minutes since the former two had arrived, trying to learn as much as they could about his encounter.  This question was Xander's.

            Spike looked away from the group that had formed a semi-circle around him, quickly becoming annoyed with the nonsense they were putting him through.  "A bloody lot of them," the vampire snapped back.  "The Cult of the Everlasting never does anything small."

            "How do you know about them?"  Wood wanted to know how Spike seemed to have a great deal of knowledge about a group of vampires that had allegedly been wiped out centuries before.

            "Let's just say I had some dealings with Barris, the little bit that's taken over as their leader, a few decades ago, dealings I'd rather not talk about," Spike definitely didn't want to be going into that story with the company he currently had.

            "Sounds like you've got a heck of a friend there," Xander immediately followed Wood's question.  "You know, spending a couple weeks trying to kill you before beating you to a bloody pulp.  It seems to me that it'd be in your best interest to be just a little bit more cooperative."

            Spike again shook his head, wondering exactly how Xander had lasted so long with the Slayer when he truly just didn't get it.  "Yeah, like cooperating with the Slayer wasn't what got me in this mess in the first place."  He looked at Faith who stood silently with her arms crossed to his left side.  "She's the reason I'm in this whole damn situation.  Her and everyone else like her."

            Faith's temper flared.  She bent down, landing a ferocious blow on Spike's stomach as she got in his face.  "Look Spike, either tell us where they are or this little wannabe big bad cult is going to be the least of your problems."  Everyone else looked on, surprised at the Slayer's sudden outburst but silently hoping it would get the job done.  "But whether you want to tell me or not, I am going to find out what I need to know."

            "Fine," the vampire surrendered, feeling he had neither the physical or emotional strength to resist any longer.  "Fine, I'll tell you where the soddin' cult is but that's it.  After this, you stay the hell away from me.  This is your fault, yours and Buffy's, all of you, your fault that I an outcast, hated by everyone.  Well you know what Faith, I hate you too, you, Buffy, all of you.  I told you I wanted out and I mean it.  After this, don't come running to old, reliable Spike every time you need a little bit of information."

            "Shouldn't be too hard if you can keep yourself from being tossed into a bloody heap on my front lawn," Faith wryly quipped back in response to the vampire's declaration.  "So are you going to get to the talking about applicable stuff pretty soon here or do I have time to grab a quick pedicure before going to kill the vampires."  As Faith was speaking, Dawn and Kennedy emerged from the adjoining room where Faith had instructed them to get the weapons ready.  The Slayer was ready to end this tonight.

            "Faith," Kennedy budged into the conversation before Spike could give an answer.  "Everything's set and ready to go."

            After acknowledging that she heard her, Faith looked back to Spike, locking her eyes with his own.  "Well?"

            "The caves on the edge of town," Spike answered dryly.  "You'll know which one it is when you see it, just look for torchlight."

            "Good enough," she motioned for the others to join her as they all walked out of Spike's earshot, the vampire having neither the will nor the desire to follow them.  They all gathered around Faith.  Seeing the determination in her eyes, no one dared to question her.  "All right, we're taking these vamps down.  They still might decide to come after Spike also.  Robin, Xander, Dawn, I need you to stay here with him, at least until he's strong enough to leave.  Robert, Kennedy, you're with me, we're going after them."

            "You sure you don't want to take some more backup?"  Xander remembered all too well a similar situation where Buffy chose to go after an enemy they knew almost nothing about.

            "Xander's right," Wood immediately followed with his own opinion.  "If this group is as organized as you seem to think they are, you're almost for certain to be outnumbered.  I think strength in numbers might be better here."

            "Being outnumbered is the exact reason not everyone is going."  Faith, seeming to fall naturally into the leader's role, had it all figured out.  "This is a hit and run attack.  We catch these vamps off guard, do as much damage as we can and if they put up too much of a fight, we bail."

            "But I still don't see –" Faith cut Xander's continued protests short.

            "If for some reason we don't make it back, I need you to pick up the pieces, to find Buffy and let her know what happened."  Faith's voice displayed no hint of emotion or fear as she satisfied Xander's arguments with that answer.  She looked at Robert and Kennedy who also showed no signs of wanting to back out.  "Ready?"  They nodded and began walking for the front door with Faith following.

            "Be careful," Xander and Wood muttered at the same time as the door slammed shut.  They gathered with Dawn in the dining room leaving Spike alone to lick his wounds.

*******

            "Looks like the place," it wasn't hard for Faith to pick out the flickering red, yellow and orange torchlight coming from deep inside the cave and emanating through the entire passage to the entrance.  She emerged from the foliage, carrying a crossbow in her hand as she purposefully strode towards the entrance.  Robert, carrying his long sword and Kennedy, carrying an axe, followed close, one of them behind each of her shoulders.

            "Definitely has that evil gathering place vibe to it," Kennedy seconded her opinion as they neared the entrance to the cave.  Faith poked her head in and around the first corner, making sure that there path was clear.  With the sun due to be up in only a couple more hours time, Faith was not counting on there being a great deal of activity during this time.  "So what's the plan?"  Kennedy broke the moment of awkward silence as they surveyed the interior.

            Faith, keeping the crossbow at a ready position, began taking tentative steps inside the cave with Robert and Kennedy close behind.  "Go in, kill the vamps, get out," was the Slayer's blunt answer.

            "At least if everything goes the way she thinks it will," Robert added.

            "Doesn't it always?"  They rounded a corner into a large open area with various passages splitting off in various directions, eight of them in total not counting the passage they had used to get here.

            "No," Kennedy beat Robert to a similar comment he was about to make.  Faith shot her a glare as her eyes went back and forth between the different tunnels, hoping her instincts would tell her what path to take.  "Just saying," Kennedy continued.  She and Robert spread out, covering Faith as she tried to make her choice.  "Seems like most plans around here have a habit of not going the way they're supposed to."

            "Seems to me like we're do for a change of luck then," Robert kept his sword at the ready while Faith stood in the center of the cave, still trying to make a decision between the passages.  Suddenly, the passages became filled with additional torchlight as they heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps rushing at them from all sides.

            Faith, Kennedy and Robert all backed into the center of the cave, their backs touching as they formed a triangle of people and readied their weapons.  "Somehow I don't think that's a change of luck coming," Kennedy gripped her axe tightly.  From each of the passages, figures clad in black robes, all holding swords began appearing, forming a circle around the Slayer and her friends but not advancing, giving them several feet of space between them.

            "Twenty-four," Robert whispered, conducting a quick count of the surrounding enemies.

            "Great," Faith raised the crossbow to her eye and steadied her aim on the closest cult vampire.  "Eight against one seems fair doesn't it?"  Her finger itched, yearning to send a bolt of wooden death into the chest of one of these vampires.  The uncertainty was torture for all three of them, not knowing what was going to happen or what they needed to do.

            "We could make a break for it," Kennedy couldn't think of any other option, neither could Robert or Faith.  "Fight our way out of here and run like hell."

            "You could try," in front of Faith and the others, came a female voice from behind the circle of vampires, out of sight.  "But these are my best warriors; you'd be dead before you took two steps."  The speaker emerged from the front rank of the cultists, arms held behind her back as she walked closer to three humans in the middle.

            Barris walked towards them, leaving the protection of the circle of cultists, her red leather outfit creaking as she moved.  "You must be Faith," the Slayer restrained from adjusting her crossbow aim to target this new vampire.  "I've been looking forward to meeting you."

            Faith cocked her head and brow.  "Never realized I was that popular with vamps."

            Barris said nothing else but began walking to her left, past Faith and stood in front of Robert.  She held her hand out, inches from his chest as he suppressed the urge to end her existence with a quick swing of his blade.  "Hmm …" she looked into his eyes, seeing a burning hatred in them.  "This one has power," she glanced past him and to Kennedy on Faith's other side.  "As does she," Barris walked away, rejoining her warriors in front of the group.  "But still, I expected more than this."

            "Hey," Faith kept her aim steady on the vampire to Barris' right.  "Don't knock it until you've tried it," she felt the growing need to get the fight on, even if it meant their deaths.  As such, she was trying to provoke Barris into making a hasty first move.

            "You have no idea what you're facing," the leader of the enemy vampire's maintained her composure, much to Faith's dismay.  "No idea how powerful we are or how powerful we will become.  You can kill all of us here and we will not be defeated.  You can scour the globe, searching for and killing all of us that you find and we will outlast you."

            "Yeah, kind of got that idea with the whole 'Everlasting' bit," Faith was quickly growing tired of Barris' ramblings.  "So do you mind if we skip the whole I'm evil speech and go straight to the ass-kicking?"  Robert and Kennedy prepared themselves as Faith issued the challenge.

            "Pitiful little girl," Barris did not falter.  "You do not understand," her once beautiful face shifted to its true demonic form.  "But you will."

            Faith steadied her aim.  "All right, let's get it on."

*******

"So you're leaving?"  The sound of Dawn's soft voice coming down the stairs made Spike stop short of the front door to the Summers' residence.  She slowly walked down the stairs, her arms, covered by the sleeves of her light blue shirt, crossed over her chest.  "Just walking away, out of our lives for good this time?"

            The vampire hesitated but took his hand off the door handle and turned around to face her, something he did not want to do.  "Yeah, look Dawn –" she cut off his attempts to justify his actions.  Spike didn't understand why he felt like he needed to do so to her.

            "Save it," her voice did not hide her anger.  "I heard what you said, that you hated all of us," she finished walking down the stairs and stood in front of the vampire.

            "Dawn I –" Spike couldn't begin to think of a way to justify what he had said.  "I'm sorry; I didn't mean that, not about you."

            "Don't Spike," Dawn didn't want to hear it.  "Don't try to sit here and tell me you didn't mean it.  I heard your voice, I heard what you said, don't try to lie to me Spike."  She took a step closer to him.  "I know she hurt you Spike."  Now it was Spike who didn't want to hear what was being said.  "I know you went through a lot for Buffy and she walked out on you."

            "This isn't about Buffy," he tried to misdirect her off the subject.

            "Right," Dawn's voice mocked him.  "This isn't about how she told you she loved you and you didn't believe her or about how she packed up and left town but made you stay behind.  Don't try telling me this isn't about Buffy Spike."

            "What do you know," his emotions built up inside of him to the point they had to be released.  "You can't possibly know how it feels, there's no way.  You don't know what it's like to have someone you love hate you and to be hated by everyone else in the world.  So don't try to give me this little speech Summers, because you don't know me."

            "I thought I did, but I was wrong."

            "What do you want me to do Dawn?"  Despite the emotion in his demand, Spike kept his voice to a whisper so as to not draw alarm from Xander and Wood who were patiently waiting in the dining room for any word from Faith.  "Rejoin the great, epic fight against evil?  Sorry, I've had my fill of it.  After nearly getting myself killed saving the world and having nothing to show for it aside from people wanting to kill me showing up at my door everyday."

            "Get out Spike," Dawn did not question her decision.  "Get out and never come back."  Spike said nothing else as he flung open the door and disappeared into the night, slamming the door behind him.  Unable to control herself, Dawn sat down on the stairs, her head falling into her hand as she began to cry.  

After only a few seconds, she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder.  She looked up with tear stained eyes to see Xander sitting next to her with his arm around her.  "That was a brave thing you just did."

"Then why does it feel so bad?"  Dawn didn't understand it, feeling so burnt up inside just over throwing Spike out.  "I mean, it's not like he didn't deserve it."

"Two reasons," Xander began his explanation.  "Number one, you're growing up, having to make grown up choices and that always hurts in the beginning even though it starts to get easier.  Number two, for reasons I can't quite understand, you care about Spike and you want to help him."  Dawn nodded an affirmative to Xander's assumptions and thought he was especially right about Spike.  "But Spike has to make his own choices and you just need to be there for him if he decides to come around."

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Then this probably isn't where he's supposed to be."  Dawn remained silent, sitting with Xander for a longtime and being comforted in the presence of her friend.

*******

            With a quick pull of her finger, Faith sent a crossbow bolt flying into the chest of one of the cultists, turning him into a fading cloud of dust and signaling the start of the battle.  With their swords at the ready, they charged at the group, their weapons meeting those of the heroes in a colossal clash of steel.

            Faith did not take time to reload the crossbow.  With multiple enemies advancing on her, she dropped the weapon, reaching behind her back and quickly drawing two daggers.  She ducked under the swinging sword of one of the cultists, spinning around and stabbing him in the stomach with one dagger.  With the vampire stunned, she brought the other dagger around, ramming it through the front of his neck.  The cultist writhed in pain as blood pored from both wounds.  The Slayer ripped both daggers from the vampire's body, bringing them around and slicing his head off with a scissor-like maneuver.

            Two cultists brought their swords down in a vertical slash against Robert.  He raised his sword vertical to the ground, blocking both their blades and then pushed them away.  As the two attacking vampires fell backwards, Robert reached to his back pocket and produced a stake.  As the two cultists recovered, he flung the wooden weapon into one of their chests, reducing him to dust.  The other attacker again swiped at him with his sword, Robert parrying the blow.

            Kennedy ducked and rolled out of the way as three cultists converged on her in unison, swiping and slashing with their swords.  Regaining her footing, she swiped with her axe, cutting the legs out from underneath one of the vampires.  As he collapsed to his knees, she rammed him through the back with the pointed end of the axe handle.  The swords of the other two ripped through the cloud of dust as the cultists moved to avenge their fallen comrade.  She blocked the attack with the long axe handle and went on the offensive, her axe meeting their swords as the battle raged.

            Faith side-stepped the advancing vampire, parrying another sword attack with the dagger in her left hand.  She grasped the hand of the vampire carrying his sword and twisted it, listening to the bones pop as she did so.  Still tightly gripping his hand, she kicked the cultist in the ribs and again in the side of his face.  As the creature continued to struggle, she wrenched the sword from his hand, letting it fall to the floor as she popped his elbow out of the socket.  The Slayer followed this by launching a ferocious pummeling of the vampire's face, culminating in her severing his head in much the matter of the first with both daggers.  Two more closed on her and Faith continued the fight.

            Robert came off of parrying a low cut move from his enemy and brought his sword around in a diagonal slice from above.  The vampire brought his sword up not a second too soon and blocked this attack.  With their blades locked, the cultist reached into his cloak, pulled a dagger from within it and lunged at Robert.  As he slid out of the way, he delivered a forceful kick to his enemy's chest.  As the vampire's balance struggle, Robert spun his sword around, severing his head with a quick swipe.  He did not have time to savor his victory as a new wave of cultists was quickly upon him.

            Swinging her axe low to the ground, Kennedy brought another cultist crashing to the ground, landing firmly on his back.  As others continued to advance on her, she rammed the wooden handle through his heart and quickly bringing the axe back into a ready position.  Another cultist closed, madly swinging his blade.  Kennedy maneuvered from side to side, dodging his lightning fast swings.  She found an opening, ducking her body and slamming the blade of the axe into his stomach as he completed another swing of the sword.  As he fell upon the blade, she pulled it out of his stomach, swinging it around and severing his head.

            As Faith severed the head of another vampire and parried an attack from another, she began to look away from the battle she was engaged in and to Barris who was standing safely away from the bulk of the fighting, flanked by a cultist to her right and left.  "Robert," Faith grabbed a cultist by his shoulders and rammed his face into her knee.  "Can you two buy me some time?"  Faith did not dare turn her back away from her own fight to check on theirs.

            Robert pushed another cultist away, swinging his sword around and again locking blades with the demonic minion.  "Depends," he broke his sword loose, stabbing the vampire in the stomach, slowing him down significantly.  "On how much time you need."  Kennedy, still fiercely engaged in her own battle, echoed a similar sentiment.

            Faith sliced another vampire across the neck, blood squirting onto her shirt as she focused her attentions entirely on Barris.  "Not long," she assured.  The Slayer began moving towards the leader of the cult.  Another vampire moved to block her path, bringing his sword down in a vertical slice.  Faith maneuvered the upper half of her body out of the way.  She knocked his blade out of the way with one dagger and stabbed him through the heart with the other, not a killing blow but it would slow him down for the time she needed.

            When she neared Barris, the two cultists at her side began to move to engage but the female vampire held them back.  "No need," she remarked as her two guards restrained themselves.  "I will handle the Slayer on my own," she calmly stepped forward, leaving the two cultists behind her.

            "Deciding to fight your own battles now huh?"  Faith scoffed as she spun her two daggers around on her fingers, anxious to end this fight.  "Sure you don't want your big, bad cult members to give you a hand?  Might be a little rough you know?"

            Barris' hands dropped two her sides.  Before now, Faith hadn't noticed the two daggers in sheaths on her thighs.  She drew and readied both of them in a flash, causing Faith to assume a defensive position.  "I've fought many Slayers before in my time.  You're no different than any of the others, weak and stubborn."

            Faith gave her a wry grin in response to the insult.  "And all of you vamps look a like, so why don't we get on with it?"  Nothing else was side.  In a whirlwind of steel, Barris spun towards her with her daggers spinning.  Faith fell back, deflecting every attack Barris threw at her, sparks flying as their blades fiercely and quickly clashed with each other.  

In an instant, Faith locked their blades together.  She parted Barris' arms, keeping their daggers locked, creating an opening in front of her chest.  Faith flipped backwards, extending her leg and kicking Barris under the chin.  It took the vampire less than second to recover and she again charged at Faith, stabbing and swiping with her daggers.  Faith dodged the attacks she could not knock away and finally slid one of her own blades into an opening on Barris' defense, cutting a sliver in her top on the right side of her stomach.

The battle paused briefly as Barris looked at the tear in her clothing.  "Not bad"

"Thanks," the fight resumed.  Their blades again clashed with dizzying speed displayed by both combatants.  Faith and Barris traded blows with their daggers, each deflecting or dodging the attacks from the other.  As faith raised her arm to parry one attack, Barris moved faster than her and brought her second dagger down across it, cutting a couple inches down her forearm.  The Slayer pressed on, more determined than ever to win this fight.

In a quick movement, Robert knocked a sword away from one of the cultists.  He brought his sword back around and severed the head of the vampire.  Seeing that Faith was engaged against Barris, Robert instead ran to Kennedy who was pinned against the wall by a vampire, her weapon out of reach.  He tossed his sword aside, grabbing the vampire by the shoulders, pulling him off her and shoving him into the cave wall.  Before the creature could react, he rammed a stake through his heart.

"Thanks," Kennedy scrambled to pickup her axe and rejoined the fight against another group of advancing cultists.

"Anytime," Robert picked up his sword and went back to the fight.

Faith delivered a strong scissor kick to Barris, sending her colliding into the cave wall.  She ran at the vampire, stabbing with a dagger.  Barris knocked the weapon away with her own but was unable to do so against Faith's second attack, ramming her other dagger into the vampire's shoulder.  Barris was not to be defeated yet.  With her free arm, she sliced Faith across the stomach, the Slayer falling backwards.

Both of them assumed their combat stances and prepared to continue the fight when rocks began to fall from the ceiling.  A cultist rushed to Barris' side, as neither the vampire nor Faith advanced on each other.  "Mistress, the cave is collapsing."  Barris and Faith both narrowly backed away from a large piece of tumbling debris, neither losing sight of their target.

Giving Faith a final and long stare, Barris came to the realization that this battle would not end tonight without the deaths of them all.  "Fall back," she ordered.  Instantly the cultists broke off combat and began falling back further within the caves, knowing safe places they could hide and other exits they could take.  Barris was the last to leave, giving Faith another hard glare as she did.  "This is only beginning Slayer."

Despite the debris collapsing from all around her, Faith did not move.  She simply watched as Barris disappeared into the blackness of the cave, suppressing the urge to follow her.  "Faith, let's go!"  Kennedy shouted from the entrance.  Conceding not a victory and not a defeat, Faith followed her and Robert out.

**_To Be Concluded …_**


	6. Envoi

ENVOI 

            Two days later, life in Sunnydale had again regained some degree of normalcy.  For everyone it seemed except for Faith.  The Slayer could not help but feel troubled by the events of the past few days.  The dreams had stopped but she could not help but feel that she hadn't seen the last of them either.  Worse yet, she knew that the cult was still out there and that whatever plans they had for Sunnydale hadn't even begun yet.

            This year was indeed shaping up to be more interesting than she had anticipated it being.  It seemed whoever the great powers running things behind the scenes were, they hadn't intended for her first year on the free road to redemption to be one of rest and relaxation.  She was thankful for one thing, that she had been given the help she had.  For a brief moment, the Slayer wondered if she would have made it through the past few days without her friends.

            Her patrol for the night had ended with no results and she was now enjoying the quiet walk down Revello Drive towards Buffy's home.  Her home.  She had to keep reminding herself of that.  That caused her to wonder what Buffy was doing right now, wondering if this would have been easier if they were in different places.

            "Hey Faith," hearing his voice, the Slayer wondered how Robert was able to sneak up behind her without giving any indication of his presence.  When it came to Robert though, she had learned to stop asking questions a long time ago.

            "Robbie, hey," she casually turned around, a smile creeping its way onto her face.

            "Just wanted to see how you were doing," he referred of course to the wound she sustained during the course of her fight with Barris.  She realized he probably knew better than to think such a small wound would keep a Slayer down for long but she appreciated the thought all the same.

            "None the worse for wear," she lifted her shirt showing the place on her stomach where Barris had cut her.  It showed no signs of scarring and no signs that there had ever been a wound in the first place.  "All healed up," she shrugged, letting the black tank top fall back across her skin.  "Look Robbie, in all the confusion the other night, trying to get out of there before being crushed to death and all, never had a chance to thank you for what you did.  For everything you've done," she corrected herself.

            "Just trying to do my part," he downplayed what Faith saw as significant contribution.  "Look Faith, you know we haven't seen the last of them.  Since I moved here I've been trying to keep my finger on the pulse of the demon community and there's something bigger.  Something is headed for this town Faith.  That cult is just the beginning."

            "I know," he wasn't telling her anything she hadn't already figured out for herself.  "And whenever it gets here, I'm going to need all the help I can get, especially now that Spike is out of the mix."  She hesitated slightly.  "Guess I'm asking if you'd forgive me for everything that's been said and start helping out more."

            "I think I like that," he answered with a nod.

            "I'm glad," they shared a moment of silent glanced.  "How about patrol?  Tomorrow?"

            "Always ready for another adventure huh?"  Faith smiled an answer as they began walking side by side down the sidewalk.  "What about Spike?"  Even though he had only known the vampire a short time, part of Robert didn't want to see him pushed away from everyone and everything she knew.

            "Spike's out."  The Slayer was blunt and to the point.  "That's what he wants, who are we to try and convince him otherwise."

*******

            Sitting alone in his crypt, Spike polished off his second bottle of whiskey for the evening and discarded the bottle onto the floor.  It had stopped hurting at least for the moment and he was going to do his best to make sure it stayed that way.  He reached to the floor by his chair, retrieving a third bottle from the paper bag on the floor.  He unscrewed the cap, put the bottle to his lips and took a long swig.

            Although he was drowning his sorrows in alcohol, his senses did not dull along with them.  He knew she was there, before he said anything, he could tell she was standing at her door.  "So," Spike did not turn around, preferring instead to stay seated with his bottle in one hand and a stake in the other incase she tried anything.  "Didn't kill the Slayer?  Imagine my disappointment."

            "You don't understand do you Spike?"  Barris could not understand his reluctance to come back to their side, to join their cause.  She was offering him everything where he had nothing.

            "I understand perfectly," he stood up, spinning around on his feet, still holding on to the bottle and stake.  "I understand that none of them are for you and neither am I.  Come back here again Barris and I'll kill you myself."

            "If that's what you want," she turned and took several steps away before pivoting around to face him a final time.  "But I want you to remember the chance I offered you Spike.  A few months from now, when everything is going to hell.  When the Slayer and her little gang are struggling to stand against the whirlwind and when you're begging me to end you're suffering and give you a quick death, remember that you had a chance to be a part of it all and you spat on it.  Now you'll have to die with all the rest."  She gave him a last seductive smile.  "See you around Spike."  Not closing the door behind her, Barris walked away.

            Shaken, Spike went back to the chair, taking another swig of the whiskey as he sat down.  He checked his remaining supply of bottles, four left.  This was going to be a long night.  Spike took another drink and tried to forget about it all.

**EXECUTIVE PRODUCER**

**Gary Boshears**

**Note: **This will likely be the final episode to appear on this web-site.  All future episodes will be released on the official web-site for the series.  A link to this site is available in my author profile.  Just scroll to the top of this page and click my name, it will take you there.  Please visit the site for the most up to date news, rumors and spoilers for the series and to share your thoughts in the message board.


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